Fatima Bhutto details all in her new memoir

'The Hour of the Wolf' covers decade-long abusive relationship

Fifteen years after publishing a memoir that shook Pakistan's most powerful political dynasty, writer and activist Fatima Bhutto is returning with a deeply personal account of abuse, survival and renewal.

Bhutto's forthcoming memoir, The Hour of the Wolf, details a decade-long coercive and abusive relationship that she says she endured in silence, believing it to be love. The book marks the first time she has spoken publicly about the relationship.

"I didn't really want to do it," Bhutto said of writing the memoir in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian. "Because I felt ashamed, I felt embarrassed, I did feel all those kinds of things. But I also know that if I'd read something like this, it would have helped me."

Bhutto, a member of Pakistan's most famous political family and the niece of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, rose to international prominence with her 2010 memoir Songs of Blood and Sword. The book re-examined the Bhutto dynasty and held Benazir partly responsible for the murder of her father, Murtaza Bhutto.

The new memoir recounts how Bhutto met her partner, referred to only as "The Man", in New York in 2011 while she was touring for her first book. She describes him as "uninhibited, blazingly sure of himself … beautiful, rugged, old-school masculine … a free spirit".

Their relationship, largely long-distance, lasted 11 years. Bhutto writes that it suited her frequent travel for journalism, novels and literary festivals, but says her partner became increasingly controlling, alternating between charm and cruelty.

His behaviour, she writes, included verbal abuse, humiliation in public places and prolonged periods of silence and contempt. "He would switch from dazzling to demonic without warning," Bhutto said, adding that he gradually isolated her from friends and normal social life.