NEW YORK - A book by Pakistan’s former opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, finished just days before her assassination last month, is due to hit bookshelves in February, less than a week before crucial elections, her publisher said.‘Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West’ is to come out earlier than originally intended on February 12, HarperCollins said in a statement Monday, explaining that Bhutto’s family and advisors supported the early release.
In the book, ‘Bhutto presents a powerful argument for a reconciliation of Islam with democratic principles, in the face of opposition from Islamic extremists and Western skeptics,’ the publisher said. The former prime minister writes in the book of her joy in returning to Pakistan in October and about a previous attempt on her life, when two suicide bombers attacked her homecoming parade, killing 139 people.
The book would also feature a short afterword by her husband and her children, the publishers said. ‘No one could have known that these would be Benazir Bhutto’s final words, and somehow that makes them carry even more weight,’ said Tim Duggan, the executive editor of HarperCollins. ‘This book is her legacy,’ he added.
The book is due out six days before Pakistan goes to the polls on February 18 for an election originally scheduled for January 8 but delayed after BhuttoÂ’s December 27 assassination plunged the nation into turmoil.
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