A short reading list to get a feel for Islamabad and Pakistan before you arrive.
Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid. The novelist's first book, set in Lahore but instantly recognisable to anyone who knows the urban Pakistani upper middle class. Sharp, dark, very readable.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Mohammed Hanif. A blackly comic novel about the 1988 assassination of General Zia ul-Haq in a C-130 crash — the event that ended Pakistan's longest military dictatorship and indirectly created the political setting Islamabad still operates in.
Pakistan: A Hard Country, Anatol Lieven. The most clear-eyed single-volume account of contemporary Pakistan written by an outsider — a British academic who travelled widely and listened carefully. Good background for understanding the politics you will hear discussed every evening in the city.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid. A short, taut novel about a young Pakistani's disillusion with America after 9/11. Set mostly in New York, but Islamabad and Lahore feature in the closing chapters.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo. Set in Mumbai not Islamabad, but the closest English-language account of the way modern South Asian cities really work — useful context for understanding the social geography of any Pakistani capital.