This book is a Pakistani rendition of Austen's world and while all the Pakistani references add color and context, sometimes the author takes it a bit too far. The names of the characters in particular are too on-the-nose for me and while some characters are beautifully translated into their South Asian counterparts (hello Pinkie Binat!), some seem a bit caricaturish. Overall it is a good light read and fans of P&P will love it, but it leaves you a bit wanting for a little bit of gravity and depth.

In this re-imagined Pride and Prejudice tale, we see the Binat family living in rural Pakistan at the turn of the 21st century. The five Binat sisters are very much like the Bennet sisters, with a bit of modern rethinking. Alys and Jena are the breadwinners of the family, teaching at the English school in town. When the wedding of the decade occurs, the Binat family are invited and meet Bugles (Bingley), Darsee, and the like. Pride, prejudice, and misunderstanding follow as the book shadows Austen's classic.

I am a sucker for pretty much anything Pride and Prejudice. I love the original and many of the retellings. Unfortunately, this was an exception to the rule. Overall, the writing was solid and while the plot closely follows the original, the characters are completely flat and unlikable. The entire Binat family free-loads off of Jena and Alys' income while showing disrespect and entitlement at every turn. It shows the people of Pakistan in an unfavorable light: in the late 20th Century women are only meant to be pretty, virginal, insipid and run a household while men are only as valuable as the lifestyle they can offer a potential bride. Apparently only people of light, alabaster skin tone are considered attractive and if you dare have a darker complexion, then you are ugly no matter your features. It makes no sense that Mrs. Binat is so eager to sell off her daughters as they would lose what little income they have when Jena and Alys leave the home. The random and surprising vulgar language that sometimes pops up randomly seems to be inconsistent with the rest of the book and the characters.

I would say skip this one unless you are such a die hard Austen fan you cannot possibly let a version of Pride and Prejudice exist without consuming it.

I realize that there have been many, many takes on Pride and Prejudice but this was charming and fresh; even though you know how it ends, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the writing.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl can go from pauper to princess or princess to pauper in the mere seconds it takes for her to accept a proposal.”


Pride and Prejudice remains my favorite book of all time. So, I am a sucker for all “sequels”, takeoffs, etc. Some have been very good (Eligible, Longbourn), others deadly (Mary B, I’m looking at you).

This takeoff on P&P takes place in modern day Pakistan, which works well, because so few other places in modern times can get away with the idea that marriage and being a mother is the be all and end all for a woman.

What doesn’t work is the author’s idea that the names must all be bad take offs on the originals. As if we couldn’t have figured out for ourselves who was meant to be whom. This lacks the sophisticated dry humor of Austen, but few measure up there. The issue is always being humorous without descending into caricature. It skates dangerously close at times. But it’s charming and enjoyable in its own way. And I did appreciate Kamal getting a laugh in on those who see a movie or miniseries and feel like they’ve read the book. Cue Colin Firth in a wet shirt...

Where Kamal does shine is when she takes on Pakistani culture. Not just how the women are treated and valued, but how the citizens reconcile their history with the English empire, especially given that Alys teaches English literature. I don’t know much about current Pakistani culture, but it all just felt real.

Kamal doesn’t feel the need to mirror the plot of P&P exactly, which is a good thing. She retains enough of the original story while putting her own unique spin on it. Overall, this is one P&P revision I can recommend. My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

Pride and Prejudice re-imagined in 21st century Pakistan.

The five Binat sisters couldn't be more different. Alys is a modern woman with a career and has no intention of ever marrying much to the chagrin of her obsessed mother!

Alys and her sister Jena teach English to girls knowing full well that most of them will choose marriage over career. Alys teaches them all things Jane Austen and wants to inspire them to do more with their lives.

I love how the characters names were versions of the Pride and Prejudice novel. I especially loved that mother. Oh my goodness she was dramatic! I laughed so hard at all of her efforts to marry off at least one daughter and hopefully keep them all from being ruined before then.

She sets them all up at the biggest wedding their town has ever seen and sits back and waits for the proposals to pour in. Imagine her horror when they all take control over their own lives without any help from her. Though she will take credit.

I have to say I am not a big Jane Austen fan. So much angst among them all. But this version, oh yes! I loved every minute of it!

Very Well Done!

Netgalley/January 15th 2019 by Ballantine Books

I am a giant Jane Austen fan, so when I saw that there was going to be a modern retelling in Pakistan, I was thrilled! I love when retellings take the original story and rework it to make it into something new and different, but not so much that the original story is lost. Kamal did a great job giving the characters that we all know and love their own modern-day twist, while still keeping the original spirit of each character intact.

I really loved Alys and all of the ways that she still embodied Elizabeth Bennet. I thought it was great that she was a high-school English teacher, and that she was so anti-marriage. I thought this translated very well. She was still a spunky, relatable character who had me cheering her on the entire time.

I didn’t know much about Pakistan before reading this novel. I enjoyed all of the detail about clothing, food, marriage celebrations, traditions, and religious beliefs. It really helped to immerse me in the story. I found it fascinating that so many of the social conventions from Jane Austen’s time translated so well to modern-day Pakistan. I always appreciate when a novel can take me to another culture and make me feel at home and welcome there.

All of that to say, there were a few sections that were a bit too on the nose, in regards to making the story different from the original. But, overall, I loved the similarities as well as the differences. I would absolutely recommend this to any Austen lover, as well as anyone who enjoys being set down into a different culture.

My Rating:
4.5/5.0

I gave Unmarriageable 4.5 STARS! My Austen-loving heart was so happy reading this book!


*This review is currently posted on my blog, Whit Reads Lit - www.whitreadslit.com *

It is a truth universally acknowledged that some stories are so good that no one can resist retelling them. Pride and Prejudice is one such. There are so many retellings of this novel that the field is flooded. Only the truly unique retellings, like Soniah Kamal’s Pakistani version, Unmarriageble, stand out enough to catch the eye. But I am a little disappointed to report that, apart from relocating the classic tale to an unfashionable down in Pakistan around the turn of the twenty-first century, Unmarriageable is faithful to the original beat for beat. I had been hoping for a little more coloring outside of the lines. Readers who want to see Pride and Prejudice play out in a new location will be delighted, I think.

Alysbet Binat teaches English at the British School of Dilipabad. At the age of 31, her mother despairs of her ever getting married. Alys’s older sister, Jena, and her younger sisters are all somewhat “unmarriageable” to the keen eyes of the local marriage market. Jena is too old. Alys is too old and too headstrong. Mari is so devout it puts people off. Qitty is overweight. And Lady is a hellion. Mrs. Binat’s hysteria grows over the course of the novel as her daughters keep “ruining” their chances of getting married. There are times when Mrs. Binat and Lady’s fat-shaming of Qitty was bad enough that I considered putting a trigger warning on this post.

Unmarriageable follows the same plot arcs as Pride and Prejudice closely enough that I’m not going to summarize the novel. I’d rather focus on what’s different. Unmarriageable is full of wonderful meals that made me long for a Pakistani restaurant so that I could zoom out and try all the amazing things the Binats were eating. I also had a great time working out who was who from the original story. (The Pakistani versions of the names aren’t too hard to puzzle out.) The text is also liberally sprinkled with Urdu, followed by helpful but unobtrusive translations, to help transport us readers. That said, I wish that Kamal had devoted a little more time to describing the places Alys et al. visit. With the exception of a border closing ceremony at Wagah-Attari, the places the characters visit are simply listed. Curious readers will have to head to Wikipedia to learn more.

There were plenty of places where Unmarriageable made me uncomfortable. There were several times when I wanted to barge into the story to slap Lady and Mrs. Binat because they are truly awful at times in how they treated Qitty or harped on about the high-risk Pakistani marriage market. But once the novel had progressed past Lady’s elopement and Alys and Darsee started to sort their problems out, I felt the familiar comfort of Pride and Prejudice shine through. Kamal also provides an epilogue that catches us up with all the characters a year later. The epilogue has enough happy updates that I felt much better about the book overall.

Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal is a modern retelling of Pride & Prejudice. The story was great and switched it up by having it take place in Pakistan during the early 2000s. I plan to recommend to my book group.

This book was very enjoyable. It’s an interesting twist on Jane Austen. I thought the characters were fantastic & rich. Very well developed. I especially enjoyed Alys. Her family is so diverse & her mom is a hoot. It’s nice to see a different point of view using the Pakistani culture. Highly recommend this book.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are universal truths, and this is made plain in Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal, a Pride and Prejudice retelling set in Pakistan in the early 2000s.

While it might seem surprising at first that a book set in England and written over 200 hundred years ago could be adapted for modern-day Pakistan, it makes sense when you consider why Pride and Prejudice is still popular at all.

The patriarchy is going to patriarch, no matter the year or the country. Any time and place that has a patriarchal culture is going to find similarities in Pride and Prejudice. It’s why TV shows like Downton Abbey are so popular, it deals with the exact same themes in a slightly altered setting.

The book itself even makes this point when Alys (the Elizabeth Bennet character) says, “But reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.” Alys further drives this point home when she says, “O’Connor, Austen, Alcott, Wharton. Characters’ emotions and situations are universally applicable across cultures, whether you’re wearing an empire dress, shalwar kurta, or kimono.”

Unmarriageable, though, does not just take the themes of Pride and Prejudice and write a book set in modern Pakistan, but she even follows a similar tone and style of writing, which really makes the book readable for anyone who ever enjoyed Pride and Prejudice.

This is a fantastic Austen adaptation. Fully formed characters, a compelling social and cultural backdrop, and a plot where the stakes remain very much as they were for the characters in the original novel (rather than going down significantly, as is often the case in contemporary Austen adaptations). Truly excellent!
I've read a lot of articles about how Jane Austen's Indian and Pakistani fanbase has been growing, and that it's in large part because they feel their current society is so closely mirrored by the world Austen depicts. This is the first time I've gotten to see where that connection comes from, as opposed to just hearing about it, and it's completely fascinating.

First, I would like to thank the publisher and author for allowing me a chance to read a digital ARC of this title in exchange for my honest opinion.

Ugh, another Austen copy gone bad. I always get sucked in to anything Austen and unfortunately it doesn't always go well. I liked the premise and actually enjoyed the book at the beginning. I liked the story of a Indian single woman, living at home and teaching Austen as part of her English Lit class. I liked the comparisons between life in their modern culture and life in Austen's Pride and Prejudice. I thought that was clever and interesting idea.
Unfortunately, that idea was just lead in to a badly executed redo of Pride and Prejudice down to using all of the same characters (with Indian tweaked names) and reenacting all of the events in the original. I know what happens in Pride and Prejudice. I love that story. I don't want to read it again in a way sub-par form. I found these characters to be overbearing, obnoxious, spoiled and with little redeeming qualities. I couldn't care less about them or if they find happiness. I was bored, bored, when I wasn't annoyed, and just wanted to get through it. I so wish the author had stuck with her original storyline going at the beginning. A creative, new novel based on Pride and Prejudice would have been enjoyable and admirable. This failed for me.

This book was very informative. I loved the story told from Alys and her sister. This book is taking place in the Middle East where the culture especially regarding females is different. I liked hearing her students stories and how they felt on their traditions as well. Even their parents input was used in the novel. It really opened my eyes to things I knew nothing to very little about. I highly recommend this book.

As the description says, this is a wonderful Pakistani version of Pride and Prejudice. And yes, I equally adored Darsee and Alysba in this one, and the whole cast of familiar and yet not at all familiar characters.

I was looking forward to reading this, as I am a huge Austen fan. I thought it was going to be similar in the way “Eligible” was. But I was disappointed that the author chose to basically copy the entire book and simply substitute Pakistani versions of each character’s name. It was very derivative. I did enjoy learning so much about Pakistani culture.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice. I can take it or leave it. But I absolutely adored this retelling set in Pakistan. It's a great update of an old classic, and I loved learning about Pakistani culture. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy.

This latest of the many, many cash-ins on Pride and Prejudice was, unlike most of them, pretty entertaining. The twist here is that the story is set in Pakistan circa 2000, which seems to map well over the confining atmosphere of gentry England circa 1800.

Unlike the Curtis Sittenfeld version, whose characters all tended toward the crass and almost determinedly mundane, this version offers some genuine good people among all the antics of marriage-obsessed mamas and girls raised in a hothouse atmosphere that seems to foster competition and shaming rather than friendship and mutual support.

The novel stays close to the original—at times a trifle too on-the-nose. Alys (stand-in for Elizabeth Bennet) is sitting in the cemetery smoking with her bestie Sherry (stand-in for Charlotte Lucas) as the latter delivers Charlotte’s long speech about marriage that is almost word-for-word. There are many other such moments.

Despite the extremely close following of the plot, and the frequent mentions of P&P (Alys’s favorite book; the opening was one of the best scenes in the book, wrapped around that famous first sentence) there is no mention whatsoever of how very closely her life is following the plot. Not even noting that Alys is the second of five sisters, the middle of whom tends to spout well-worn religious (Muslim, in this case) saws, much less that the snobbish guy she hates has Darsee as a last name.

It’s a shame, because I think this book could have benefitted immensely from some interesting deconstruction, or at least literary conversation, with the original. There were plenty of vivid and clever passages that made me wish the author had been a little bolder.

I liked Sherry, who made an interesting Charlotte, unromantic as the original, yet determined to get married as the only way out of an impossible situation. I could have done without her ‘rebellion’ being smoking, that repulsive cliché, but the payoff was her genuine delight in her marriage, drawbacks and all.

Mrs. Binat (Mrs. Bennett) managed to be surprisingly sympathetic as well as silly. The Mr. Collins substitute, Farhat Kaleen, veered between being interesting and a caricature, but he was always entertaining. Mr. Darsee was suitably handsome and in the second half too good to be true, and the Wickham character a real snake. Mr. Binat was a fairly straightforward copy of Mr. Bennet, swapping out gardening for reading, except that the author gave him a truly splendid moment of insight at the end, prompting one of the best passages in the book. Another hats off was Qitty (Kitty)’s ending, even if we didn’t get a scene but a narrative summary.

Alys, for the most part, was sympathetic, an intelligent woman in an extremely constraining setting, but at times she seemed a tad too strident in her hardcore feminism, making me wish for a little of Lizzie Bennet’s grace. Hammy and Sammy, the Bingley sisters, were a crackup, as was Lady (Lydia), irrepressible to the end.

Overall the book was an entertaining and fast read, providing me with a list of Pakistani authors to try out. For that alone the book deserves an extra star.

Unmarriageable is Pride and Prejudice retelling set in modern day Pakistan. I found the updated setting interesting but overall I was mostly bored while reading this book. I thought that beyond an interesting new setting, modern-day Pakistan instead of Regency England, there was nothing new or surprising about this retelling. I enjoyed the first and last few chapters but found the big chunk in the middle very boring and humorless. Where was the wry wit I was promised? Unmarriageable was not a bad book by any means but it just didn't live up to my expectations.

Pride and Prejudice, but with sassy contemporary Pakistani women and lots of chai and samosas!

This was great fun, the type of book I thought about when not reading and hurried back to. I have read P&P a few times over the years and I think that was perfect in coming to this retelling: I know the broad strokes of the story and had lots of aha moments about characters and plot points, but I'm not a purist and wasn't distressed by discrepancies or other authorial choices.

Light reading but with interesting themes of contemporary career and marital norms in a traditional religious society.

It's a tricky thing to write a retelling of a book as beloved as Pride and Prejudice, and while this wasn't the worst I've read of the sort, it also wasn't the best. It wasn't bad, just not as satisfying as I had hoped. I did think the author wrote the characters well, though, and enjoyed that aspect of the book.