S.M. Zafar’s look at Pakistan’s history, despite some biases and low production values, is a mine of information...
Published 26 Apr, 2020 06:06am
Launched in 2019, the Zeenat Haroon Rashid (ZHR) Writing Prize for Women is now receiving non-fiction submissions ...
Published 19 Apr, 2020 06:20am
Have you ever wondered if your smartphone can think and feel by itself? With all its face-recognition technology and...
Published 19 Apr, 2020 06:20am
Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that…
Updated 19 Apr, 2020 01:06pm
A first-of-its-kind book in Urdu tracing the history and evolution of documentaries is particularly notable for its...
Published 19 Apr, 2020 06:20am
An English translation of Mirza Athar Baig’s surreal 2014 Urdu novel stays true to its source, bridging the gap betwe...
Published 19 Apr, 2020 06:20am
Lahore-born author Anita Mir’s novel The Inside City has been longlisted for this year’s RSL Ondaatje Prize,...
Published 12 Apr, 2020 07:06am
There’s a parable somewhere which says that each of us has nine — or is it 12? — teachers who guide us to our goa...
Published 12 Apr, 2020 07:06am
Easy to read and full of wisdom, a book questions some accepted beliefs about raising children...
Published 12 Apr, 2020 07:06am
Stephen Chbosky re-enters the literary scene after 20 years with a bone-rattling, horror novel...
Published 12 Apr, 2020 07:06am
After three decades of stop-start reforms, both academics and practitioners need a better understanding of exactly...
Published 12 Apr, 2020 07:06am
Noak Jhoak: Tanz-o-Mazah, Haqqee Ke Purkaar Aur Bagh-o-Bahar Qalam Se
Shanul Haq Haqqee
This collection of ...
Published 05 Apr, 2020 06:27am
The world has swung around and rearranged itself so much since I wrote my last Dawn column that I couldn’t ...
Published 05 Apr, 2020 06:27am
Empathetic and provocative, a compelling book for anyone who wants to understand Iran as it exists today...
Published 05 Apr, 2020 06:27am
A hefty tome that surveys literature on the megalopolis of Karachi could have done with more rigour and better fact...
Published 05 Apr, 2020 06:27am
Ian McEwan puts his own spin to Brexit and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
in this disjointed novella...
Published 05 Apr, 2020 06:27am
A novel that seems like fluffy chick-lit about online dating has multiple layers...
Published 29 Mar, 2020 07:36am
An anthology of essays provides insight into the labyrinth of India’s military and civilian nuclear programmes...
Published 29 Mar, 2020 07:36am
Romesh Gunesekera, the celebrated Anglophone writer of Sri Lankan origin, is the recipient of several awards...
Published 29 Mar, 2020 07:36am
The latest novel by the multiple award-winning Romesh Gunesekra is a haunting and poetic foray into a newly indepe...
Published 29 Mar, 2020 07:36am
A recent action-filled and gripping novel revolving around Iraq’s biological weapons
is a stark reminder of the...
Published 22 Mar, 2020 06:49am
A new anthology of essays questions whether communities or individuals historically subject...
Published 22 Mar, 2020 06:49am
Alam’s canvas is both vast and complex. What distinguishes his storytelling is the simultaneity of conscious and...
Published 22 Mar, 2020 06:49am
Pakistan is in dire need of engaging in a dialogue with the world, but the means to do so is neither supported nor...
Published 22 Mar, 2020 06:49am
Karen Armstrong’s latest book is a grand tour of world religions, that develops her thesis that scripture is a way to
Published 15 Mar, 2020 08:49am
A debut novel presenting itself as chick-lit is let down by the author’s inability to find her voice and her desire to
Published 15 Mar, 2020 08:45am
A new book argues that well-designed and implemented public policies can indeed have significant impacts in reducing
Published 15 Mar, 2020 08:40am
Stopping short of being declared a pandemic on a global scale by watchdog bodies, the dreaded coronavirus has...
Published 15 Mar, 2020 08:35am
An exploration of the ancient rock art found in the Kirthar Mountains of Sindh and Balochistan, comprising pictures as
Published 15 Mar, 2020 08:34am
Hit by fears of the coronavirus, the Karachi Literature Festival nevertheless managed to pull off what is still the
Published 08 Mar, 2020 08:35am
Despite some flaws, a debut novel charmingly depicts village life and growing up within it as a free spirit
Published 08 Mar, 2020 08:32am
A travelogue from the Western Sahara, now translated into English, tells of a Taiwanese woman longing to escape her
Published 08 Mar, 2020 08:26am
Two unpublished poems from the writer…
Published 08 Mar, 2020 08:19am
An evaluation of covert deceptions allegedly perpetrated by India from a decidedly Pakistani state perspective. Many of
Published 08 Mar, 2020 08:18am
Hindus have been living in Balochistan since time immemorial, and ruled some parts of it too, before...
Published 01 Mar, 2020 07:05am
A superb English translation of Ismat Chughtai’s take on India’s Emergency in 1975, which is as prescient now...
Published 01 Mar, 2020 07:05am
Despite being forced to close early on all three days and the organisers’ efforts to keep the agenda apolitical...
Published 01 Mar, 2020 07:05am
Dr Pirzada Qasim’s third collection of poetry has arrived after a span of many years.
And the wait has been worth...
Published 01 Mar, 2020 07:05am
I am presently engrossed in William Dalrymple’s dazzling work The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India...
Published 23 Feb, 2020 07:06am
A debut novel spins a tight story that explores multiple facets of humanity or, occasionally, the lack of it...
Published 23 Feb, 2020 07:06am
What has been your takeaway from writing and getting In the Company of Strangers published?
A lot of aspiring...
Published 23 Feb, 2020 07:06am
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz explains why wealth creation is different from wealth extraction and why inequality...
Published 23 Feb, 2020 07:06am
A compendium of prose fiction and poetic responses to the most barbaric colonial-era massacre in the Subcontinent...
Published 23 Feb, 2020 07:06am
An Urdu translation by Mahmood Alam Siddiqui of Saleena Karim’s 2010 book, Secular Jinnah and Pakistan:
Published 16 Feb, 2020 07:09am
Written in a clear style and modern idiom, these poems display concerns of one of the most important contemp...
Published 16 Feb, 2020 07:09am
Malcolm Gladwell takes on what the research tells us about our misperceptions about people’s motivations...
Published 16 Feb, 2020 07:09am
An English translation of an Arabic novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize, is a complex story of...
Published 16 Feb, 2020 07:09am
Nisar Aziz Butt, who passed away on February 7, was a highly erudite and multi-faceted writer in whose mind time...
Published 16 Feb, 2020 07:09am
Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s latest is a 13th century detective story that explores the nature of power and myth in a...
Published 09 Feb, 2020 06:58am
Faiz spoke about prison, chain, lock, fire and scheming political leaders in his very first collection of pre-Pakistan..
Published 09 Feb, 2020 06:58am
A free-flowing Punjabi memoir that presents us with a micro-historical look into the varied experiences of...
Published 09 Feb, 2020 06:58am
The turnout at this year’s festival was significantly lower than last year’s inaugural event, but its significance...
Updated 09 Feb, 2020 10:59am
The significance of an original collection of Pakistani English poetry lies in its ambition and desire to transcend...
Updated 02 Feb, 2020 08:04am
From inter-cultural to intra-cultural orientations, the world owes much to those who have translated works of...
Updated 02 Feb, 2020 12:32pm
I spent a life-changing year in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the 1990s — a visit I have written about a few times for...
Updated 02 Feb, 2020 08:03am
Litterateur Harold Bloom’s last book is a gift that his admirers and critics will relate to with equal respect...
Updated 02 Feb, 2020 08:04am
Kanhaiyya Laal (Khalid Latif after conversion to Islam) Gauba was a Lahore-born lawyer, author and politician...
Published 26 Jan, 2020 07:05am
I approach biographies of my favourite writers with some trepidation, more so when the writer in question has ...
Published 26 Jan, 2020 07:05am
A lucid book adds nuance, depth and deeper understanding about the issue of counterfeit and substandard medicines...
Published 26 Jan, 2020 07:05am
Random House’s chief copy editor lets loose on how to edit and the copy that infuriates him
Published 26 Jan, 2020 07:05am
Symbols, metaphors, intricate imagery and poetic prose come together in this labyrinthine novel that is an ode to...
Published 26 Jan, 2020 07:05am
A dazzling collection by one of the best short story writers of our times combines the absurdity of a Coen brothers...
Published 19 Jan, 2020 08:47am
A translation of essays by one of the foremost Chinese writers in early 20th century adds a textured understanding to...
Published 19 Jan, 2020 08:44am
Ilhan Niaz’s latest book on the background dynamics of the British Raj provides valuable insights into today’s...
Published 19 Jan, 2020 08:41am
All characters are so palpable and identifiable in the context of Pakistan’s political history and sociology, that...
Published 19 Jan, 2020 08:35am
The language spoken in Baltistan is said to be directly descended from Old Tibetan, which was used throughout the
Published 19 Jan, 2020 08:33am
The Palestinian poet known the world over is Mahmoud Darwish. Among the major poetic voices of our times, it is in...
Published 12 Jan, 2020 07:03am
Had it not won the Booker Prize, Bernardine Evaristo’s novel would still have entered the literary canon based on its
Published 12 Jan, 2020 07:03am
As the brother of former army chief Gen Asif Nawaz and a well-respected journalist and academic based in the United...
Updated 13 Jan, 2020 05:34pm
A solidly researched book on the relationship between the Pakistan Army and the United States offers a wealth of details
Published 12 Jan, 2020 07:03am
Julian Barnes’s latest book is a groundbreaking, genre-bending biography which has the fascination of fiction and which
Published 05 Jan, 2020 09:19am
An astonishing novel that sets out to explore complex theories regarding the human experience shows that thought
Published 05 Jan, 2020 09:16am
Revisiting 1971 in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India shows how people remember the conflict and how states influence those
Published 05 Jan, 2020 09:10am
Muhammad Hafeez Khan’s latest work of fiction — a novel in the Seraiki language titled Adh Adhooray Lok [People...
Published 05 Jan, 2020 09:07am
A collection of articles written from 1990 to date, that chart the progress — or lack, thereof — in economic, social
Published 29 Dec, 2019 07:16am
Long before the much-celebrated Latin American boom that is associated with the 1967 publication of One Hundred ...
Updated 30 Dec, 2019 02:30pm
An autobiography by an exemplary bureaucrat offers tantalising glimpses into governance in Balochistan
Published 29 Dec, 2019 07:16am
A book that asks all the pertinent questions about euthanasia and more, but which is made special by its ability to
Published 29 Dec, 2019 07:16am
An astonishingly epic debut novel is a masterful portrait of a country as well as a fitting epitaph for its gone-too
Published 29 Dec, 2019 07:16am
Fatima Bhutto’s latest book is a thoughtful and entertaining look at how American pop culture has been displaced by new
Published 22 Dec, 2019 08:55am
A Pakistani novel explores a young man’s evolving relationship to his faith, but its complexity is let down by its
Published 22 Dec, 2019 08:45am
An archaeological analysis of Afghanistan’s last great indigenous empire remarkably integrates the traditional and the
Published 22 Dec, 2019 08:31am
I once attended a talk in Karachi on the challenges that women writers face, hoping to learn something about how...
Published 22 Dec, 2019 08:23am
A simply written and illustrated explanation of how the principles of the traditional martial art of Taekwondo can be
Published 22 Dec, 2019 08:19am
In its 12th edition, the International Urdu Conference expanded to include other Pakistani languages and politics and in
Published 15 Dec, 2019 09:23am
Syed Nomanul Haq meticulously turns a compiled version of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s collected works into a critical one and thus
Published 15 Dec, 2019 09:21am
The project was initiated in memory of my mother, Zeenat Haroon Rashid, who passed away in 2017. All her life she had
Published 15 Dec, 2019 09:13am
For those who have moved across places, there is a town where they dwell and there is a town which dwells inside...
Published 15 Dec, 2019 09:09am
Margaret Atwood’s sequel to her iconic The Handmaid’s Tale may not live up to its prequel, but is remarkable for its
Published 08 Dec, 2019 08:59am
A true account of the harrowing ordeal and journey to eventual survival of a father and son is one of the finest
Published 08 Dec, 2019 08:56am
A philosopher’s recounting of philosophical traditions whets the appetite for reflection
Published 08 Dec, 2019 08:49am
Words are the medium of expression for humans ... but words also put limitations, boundaries. God is free from...
Published 08 Dec, 2019 08:46am
A debut novel set amongst a desi immigrant family in the US tackles the thorny issue of the search for the perfect
Published 01 Dec, 2019 08:28am
An analysis of the rise of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ presents a unique look at its narratives through a South Asian
Published 01 Dec, 2019 08:24am
An excellent introduction to 1700s’ South Asia, William Dalrymple’s latest book offers much more food for thought for
Published 01 Dec, 2019 08:20am
Recently Rahat Fateh Ali Khan played the arena in my home city of Leeds — four hours of liquid gold vocalisation. ...
Published 01 Dec, 2019 08:13am
A historical and contemporary political record and analysis that explains the evolution of the ideology from the margins
Published 24 Nov, 2019 07:07am
A tiny work of literature created by Charlotte Bronte — the eldest of the three Bronte sisters, and author of the novel
Published 24 Nov, 2019 07:07am
Reading on BBC2 about a series of programmes on the novels focusing on empire and race that shaped our world, I recalled
Published 24 Nov, 2019 07:07am
