The Fragrance of Tears : My Friendship with Benazir Bhutto

A memoir of Victoria Schofield's thirty-year friendship with her Oxford contemporary, Benazir Bhutto.

In the summer of 1978, Victoria Schofield travelled to Pakistan to join her friend Benazir Bhutto, whose father, the former Pakistani prime minister, was facing charges of treason following a military coup. In the fevered and desperate context of Bhutto's trial and subsequent execution, their university friendship grew into a deeper bond that would last a lifetime, ended only by Benazir's assassination in 2007.

Schofield's memoir sheds light on the troubled recent history of a turbulent region, and affectionately charts Benazir's transformation from Oxford undergraduate to political activist, prisoner and one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in South Asian politics, a woman whose life and career were defined by tragedy.