Aansouon Ki Khushboo

In the summer of 1978, Victoria Schofield travelled to Pakistan to stay with her Oxford friend Benazir Bhutto, daughter of the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She was answering an invitation to visit Benazir during her father’s appeal against the death sentence following his trial for conspiracy to murder, brought by the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. In the fevered and desperate context of Bhutto’s appeal and subsequent execution, Victoria and Benazir’s Oxford friendship grew into a deeper emotional bond that would last a lifetime until Benazir’s assassination in December 2007. As well as providing first-hand insights into Benazir’s transformation from Oxford undergraduate to political activist and the first woman prime minister of a Muslim majority country, Schofield’s memoir of their friendship sheds light on the troubled recent history of an increasingly turbulent region. Drawing on diaries and letters, she narrates the trajectory of her close and enduring relationship with one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in South Asian politics – whose life and career were defined by tragedy.