Qandeel Baloch would have approved of the cover of the book by Sanam Maher—its eye-catching colours are reminiscent of her vibrant personality, and even Qandeel could not have painted on the eyeliner better. And the pages inside live up to the cover’s promise. Maher, a Karachi-based journalist and first-time author has put together a fascinating read, which is so much more than a traditional biography of Qandeel, Pakistan’s social media star, who shone brightly but alas, briefly.
Tracing Qandeel’s journey from the South of Punjab to Islamabad, Karachi and then back to her village (on that fateful night when her brother killed for ‘honour’), Maher does not just capture a young woman’s rise to fame. She provides her readers with an intimate and insightful picture of the world Qandeel lived in, where modernity jostles (at times gently; at times violently) with tradition.
Maher takes us on a whirlwind tour of the modelling world, where we meet aspiring models as well as cynical ones. A discussion on cyber-bullying...
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