Rebel English Academy

'Smart, taut and electrifying, the tale fuses slapstick and the fun of a cat-and-mouse thriller with the serious reckoning work of a state-of-the-nation novel' Guardian





When a major Pakistani political figure is hanged, OK Town erupts in protest.





A few miles away, Sir Baghi is surprised by a knock at the door of his language school, the Rebel English Academy. An unexpected visitor, Sabiha, seeks refuge - but she has a gun, her parents are political prisoners, her husband has just died in a suspicious fire and she's clearly hiding something.





Meanwhile Captain Gul, disgraced intelligence officer, has been banished to OK Town, where he aims to silence protesters by any means necessary. But his duties - and romantic desires - begin to overlap, and his already-dubious power is further threatened.





In Rebel English Academy, we see Pakistan coming into modernity through a vibrant cast of interconnected characters that face a changing landscape with violence, passion and sharp humour. Wry, searing and deeply relevant, this is a triumphant novel about political power, religion, education, sexuality and dissent.



Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. He graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Prize. He has written the libretto for a new opera and writes regularly for the New York Times, BBC Urdu and BBC Punjabi. He currently splits his time between Berlin and Karachi.



Confirms his standing as one of south Asia's most unnervingly funny and subversive voices...Smart, taut and electrifying, the tale fuses slapstick and the fun of a cat-and-mouse thriller with the serious reckoning work of a state-of-the-nation novel...Crackling with incendiary themes and theses, this account of life under authoritarian siege is fiercely local and incontestably universal, harrowing and mutinously entertaining: a sure-fire Booker contender



I would also recommend Rebel English Academy, a droll satire on life in an authoritarian state



A Case of Exploding Mangoes felt fresh - juicy, even - in its inquisition into all the possible explanations for the unsolved mystery of Zia's death. Rebel English Academy is just as well made, with its prose lively and the pieces of its plot slotting neatly together . . . the book is alive throughout with a sense of death's-head mischief



These interconnected characters face the dissent and violence of the changing political landscape as Pakistan moves towards modernity. Compelling



Mohammed Hanif's incendiary comic novel, Rebel English Academy, makes strong demands on American readers - and rewards them . . . In the brilliant recklessness of Hanif's prose, we're falling into a volatile story about the uses and abuses of fire - and the combustible nature of truth . . . Like the American writer Paul Beatty, Hanif uses comedy not to relieve but to destabilize, to scrape beneath the crust of political reverence and make contact with the lunacy of life under tyranny



Mohammed Hanif'selegant, tensile novel exposes the long shadow of colonialism in a fable beautifully tailored to resonate in 2026



Dangerous love and subversive politics collide in this cleverly plotted, darkly satirical and wildly entertaining historical drama



Hanif strikes a successful balance between the darkly humorous and the deadly serious



An elegantly spun tale that punctures holes in our every expectation of life in an authoritarian state



Mohammed Hanif is a brave, gifted writer



Hanif is dexterous and ambitious with the literary tools of both east and west...Combine this with humour as cutting as Heller or Evelyn Waugh...and you have something wildly original



Witty, elegant and deliciously anarchic. Hanif has a lovely eye and an even better ear



An insanely brilliant, satirical first novel . . . Belongs in a tradition that includes Catch-22, but it also calls to mind the biting comedy of Philip Roth