Duty Free

Jane Austen’s Emma, transported to the outrageous social melee of 21st-century Lahore.

Our plucky heroine’s cousin, Jonkers, has been dumped by his low-class, slutty secretary, and our heroine has been charged with finding him a suitable wife — a rich, fair, beautiful, old-family type. Quickly. But, between you, me and the four walls, who wants to marry poor, plain, hapless Jonkers?

As our heroine social-climbs her way through weddings-sheddings, GTs (get togethers, of course) and ladies’ lunches trying to find a suitable girl from the right bagground, she discovers to her dismay that her cousin has his own ideas about his perfect mate. And secretly, she may even agree.

Full of wit and wickedness and as clever as its heroine is clueless, Duty Free is a delightful romp through Pakistani high society — though, even as it makes you cry with laughter, it makes you wince at the gulf between our heroine’s glitteringly shallow life and the country that is falling apart, day by day, around her Louboutin-clad feet. Moni Mohsin, already a huge bestseller in India, has been hailed as a modern-day Jane Austen, and compared to Nancy Mitford and Helen Fielding. Duty Free is social satire at its biting best.