The Autobiography of Pakistan’s Longest-Serving President
KHAN, Mohammad Ayub. Friends not Masters. A Political Autobiography. London, New York, Karachi: Oxford University Press. 1967.
8vo. Publisher’s green roan lettered in gilt to spine, top-edge gilt, green endpapers; pp. xiv, 275, [3], with two fold-out maps at end (‘Pakistan and her Neighbours’ and ‘The Indus Waters Treaty Area’) printed in blue and black, 12black-and-white photographic plates including a frontispiece; a little shelfwear with some rubbing, joints lightly rubbed, spine ends bumped with slight discolouration to head; very good; presentation inscription to blank recto of photographic frontispiece (see below).
First edition, in the publisher’s de luxe binding, of the autobiography of the self-declared president of Pakistan, inscribed by the author ‘With kind regards to Pasha | M. A. Khan […] 15.3.69’.
After the 1947 partition of British India, Mohammad Ayub Khan was rapidly promoted in the army of the new Muslim state of Pakistan. In 1958, after some ten years of political turmoil, he was appointed chief of martial law by President Iskander Mirza. Soon after, Ayub Khan declared himself president. He remainsPakistan’s longest-serving president, and his memoir was published while he was still in office. It covers his upbringing in British India, his time at Sandhurst, military service, the coup of 1958, the Indo-Pakistani war of 1965, the reforms he tried to push through, and foreign policy.
SKU: 2122423