The writer shows in this book how the life of tribal people is intricately woven together. A struggle for survival at the turn of the century. Story about the honor of people who were forced to live old ways. Must read to understand the tribal culture of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The titular character is used to explore the impact of modern geopolitics on the tribes of the area. I really like literary fiction where I learn things from the setting, so I was happy with that.

I loved the various stories of the nomadic peoples. Some characters would have deserved longer stories or I became invested enough in their lives to care what happened to them. The stories depicted a really fascinating history and culture.

This is a collection of vignettes about life in the desert in the middle of nowhere. The stories only vaguely tie together, with a recurring character lurking around in the background. We get the sense that the events happened "once upon a time", but there are also hints that these might be modern times. Lots of awful things happen to everyone, and the ending is left to the reader's interpretation. Maybe I learned something about this part of the world, but it's so nebulous that I can't really tell.

[UPDATE]
Adding another star after the book club discussion.

This is an eye opener, a collection of linked short stories about tribal life in the debated lands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is a world that I imagine very few people reading this will ever experience. The common ground in each story is Tor Baz (the Black Falcon), but he is often a minor or background character in a snapshot of an aspect of tribal life. The writing is simple and clear, giving it an almost fairy tale air, but but there is no flinching from gritty reality in the content. At the beginning I was thinking it was intended as an elegy for a way of life that was dying. By the time I finished, I’d decided it was probably a good thing said way of life was on the way out.

The Wandering Falcon is the debut novel from eighty-year old Jamil Ahmad. The book is actually more like nine loosely connected short stories than a novel. The title character, Tor Baz, appears in most every story – briefly in some and as the main focus in others. Tor Baz was born to an adulterous couple who are caught and killed when he is five years old. From that point on, he wanders from tribe to tribe, never identifying with one specific tribe. Because tribal culture is so important in this region, Tor Baz is both a suspicious and mysterious man to everyone he meets.

Each story explores some aspect of the tribal culture in the Afghan/Pakistani region in the period shortly after World War II, of which I had little knowledge before reading this book. I really appreciated learning more about the culture even if I could not always fully understand it. Ahmad writes without judgment which made the stories even more fascinating to me. Ahmad’s prose is stark but even so I found his characters, especially the women, haunting. The ending gave me chills (in a good way).

The story behind how this book came to be published is just as interesting as the book itself. Ahmad worked for many decades as a civil servant in Pakistan. He wrote the first draft of The Wandering Falcon in the 1970s and put it away. In 2008, his brother convinced him to enter it in a writing competition. Eventually it made its way into the hands of an editor at Penguin and the rest is history. Now The Wandering Falcon is long-listed for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. I hope that Jamil Ahmad keeps writing – I would love to read more from him.

I found this book very difficult to review as I am not a fan of short stories, but this book was so very different.

This is a wonderfully written debut book by the author Jamil Ahmad, at 79 years, very impressive indeed and when I read about his life, it made me enjoy this book even more knowing he had spent so many years in the deserts of Pakistan living close to the tribes of the area.

The story takes place in the area of the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Tor Baz is the main character and the book covers 9 completely different stories with Tor Baz as a small part in each one. I preferred the first few stories when Tor Baz was a child.

The author transports you to a different time and place with the delightful descriptions with sometimes harsh details of the landscapes. Jamil Ahmad does a superb job of integrating you into the story. He writes about history, traditions and unique tribal life that is fading away.
Video review in Spanish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk8leFIjE7U&list=PLniFXSpJj5RWIDC0udo2vtJsUn0Vd2HrS&index=13

Follows the path of an orphaned boy who takes on the name of a dead boy and the twists and turns of his life. Many characters cross paths both in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (between Pakistan and Afghanistan) and life. An interesting book that describes the tribes, traditions, and values of that particular society.