Room with a View (of Pakistan)

I don't quite know what to make of In Other Rooms, Other Wonders yet.  I've read through two of the eight linked stories that comprise this work of fiction/novel and I've been alternately charmed and put off by some of the things in it.  Rather like life itself.

from In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Daniyal Mueenuddin

Though he had become crooked on a large scale, Jaglani did not believe himself to have broken his feudal allegiance to K. K. Harouni, but instead felt himself appropriately to be taking advantage of the master's incapacity and lack of oversight, not seceding but simply expressing a more independent stance. He continue to run the farm extremely well and profitably, and continued sending money to Lahore, a larger share of the net in fact than he used to send, because he himself had developed other sources of income. As his political ambitions grew, he moved his family and household from the village to a large but plain house in the small city of Firoza, the subdistrict headquarters, in order to be closer to the courts and to the government administration. He kept his house in Dunyapur, and often spent nights there. An old sweepress cleaned the house, and he ate the food prepared in the dera, the administrative center, where many visitors, buyers and sellers, came and were fed and housed.