Drawing on interviews and in-depth research, Sanam Maher pieces together Qandeel Baloch's life from the village where she grew up in the backwaters of rural Pakistan, to her stint in a women's shelter after escaping her marriage, to her incarnation as a social media sensation, to her eventual murder at the hands of her brother.
What The Reviewers Say
Elizabeth Flock,
The Washington Post
... unfolds like a thriller, only it’s true ...Maher’s investigation of Baloch’s life and death is remarkable: It is not just the story of one rebellious woman but a study of an entire country and culture in collision with the new demands of the Internet, reality TV and women determined to shake off old strictures. Maher, a journalist based in Karachi, is a patient and transparent narrator, telling us where accounts conflict, which interviewees are unreliable and what questions must go unanswered. Her style of writing — stark and sometimes poetic — befits her subject.
Parul Sehgal,
The New York Times
In A Woman Like Her, an exemplary work of investigative journalism, Sanam Maher delves into the story of a woman as misunderstood in death as in life. Maher conducted hundreds of interviews — with Baloch’s family, the media, mullahs, feminist activists, experts in cybercrime — to indict the society that enabled and applauded Baloch’s murder. Waseem Azeem and his associates killed Qandeel Baloch, Maher argues, but they did not act alone.