Join us for a conversation featuring Washington Post foreign correspondent Pamela Constable and IFES President & CEO Bill Sweeney on Constable’s latest book, PLAYING WITH FIRE: Pakistan at War with Itself, the people of Pakistan and where the nuclear-armed nation stands on its founding mission to be a Muslim democracy.
In PLAYING WITH FIRE: Pakistan at War with Itself, Constable peels back layers of contradiction and confusion to reveal the true face of modern Pakistan. Unlike most books about Pakistan, this is not a policy book. This book is about the people—flood and terrorism survivors, ruling class, working class, intelligentsia; the institutions— the courts, the army, the parliament; and ultimately, how the country’s failure to live up to its founding promise is driving the society towards extremism.
Both an empathic and alarming look inside one of the world’s most violent and vexing countries, Playing with Fire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand modern Pakistan and its momentous role on today’s global stage.
The book will be available for purchase following the discussion.
About the Author:
Pamela Constable is a foreign correspondent and former deputy foreign editor at The Washington Post. Since 1998, she has reported extensively from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Iraq. Before joining the Post in 1994, she was a foreign correspondent and foreign policy reporter for The Boston Globe, where she covered South and Central America for a decade, focusing on Chile and Haiti, as well as parts of Asia and the former Soviet Union. Constable is author of Fragments of Grace: My Search for Meaning in the Strife of South Asia and co-author of A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet. A graduate of Brown University, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a winner of the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, and a former fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is the founder of the Afghan Stray Animal League, which supports a shelter and clinic for needy small animals in Afghanistan.