Benazir Bhutto ─ Favored Daughter

Benazir Bhutto led one of the most dramatic lives of the twentieth century. Born to privilege as the daughter of one of Pakistan’s great feudal families, groomed for a diplomatic career at Harvard and Oxford, she was thrust into the political arena when her father, Pakistan’s charismatic and controversial prime minister, was overthrown and executed by the military dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Her remarkable rise from persecuted opposition figure to warrior for democracy and her apotheosis as prime minister (Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim nation) were matched by the Grand Guignol of her downfall as she and her husband were accused of corruption on a large scale and suspected by many of engineering the murder of her oppositional brother. Bhutto’s unsolved assassination during her comeback presidential bid in 2007 added to a tragic familial legacy that easily rivals that of the Kennedy family or the house of Atreus. Brooke Allen’s biography draws on contemporary news sources and eyewitness reports as well as narratives by Bhutto herself, her supporters, and her enemies.

Brooke Allen is the author of Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers andTwentieth-Century Attitudes: Literary Powers in Uncertain Times. A frequent contributor theWall Street Journal, New York Times, New Criterion, and other publications, she is also the chairman of the English department at Bennington College.