Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter’s Memoir

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In September 1996 a fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a window- less dressing room shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father, Murtaza, was murdered along with six of his associates. In December 2007 Benazir Bhutto, Fatima’s aunt, and the woman she had publicly accused of ordering her father’s murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world’s best known political dynasties. Songs of Blood and Sword tells the story of the Bhuttos, a family of rich feudal landlords who became powerbrokers in the newly created state of Pakistan; the epic tale of four generations of a family and the political violence that would destroy them. It is the history of a family and nation riven by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division, written by one who has lived it. The history of this extraordinary family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself, and the quest to find the truth behind her father’s murder has led Fatima to the heart of her country’s volatile political establishment.

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Fatima was born in Afghanistan in 1982. She studied at Columbia University and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She currently writes columns for the Daily Beast, New Statesman and other publications. She lives in Karachi, Pakistan.