The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments in Karachi are looking for a miracle. Junior nurse, ex-prisoner and part-time healer Alice Bhatti is looking for a job.

With guidance from the working nurse's manual, and some tricks she picked up in prison, Alice starts work at the crowded hospital bringing help to the thousands of patients littering the corridors. But her new life isn’t easy and on top of everything else Alice impulsively falls for optimist and loveable good Teddy Butt - a ragtag law enforcement officer by night and a bodybuilder by day.

Can Alice and Teddy live happily ever after? Will the hospital accept her unorthodox ways? It all seems unlikely, but then Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse and this is downtown Karachi where the unusual is ordinary …

Prizes

Short-listed for DSC South Asian Literature Prize 2013 (UK)

Belly-laugh-inducing. Sam Lypsyte funny. Faulty-Towers funny.The silliness is anarchic and profound…a ripping story and a rowdy piece of art * New York Times *
Relentlessly readable * Guardian *
Alice Bhatti's Karachi is so alive with sensations that you can smell the sewers, hear the screeching of tyres, and feel the humidity * Scotsman *
Superbly witty * The Times *
An amusingly anarchic tale of Karachi life * Lady *

Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan, in 1965. He graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer, but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. He has written plays for the stage and BBC radio, and his film The Long Night has been shown at film festivals around the world. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel in 2008.