A selection of essays on diverse topics written for a blog incorporates engagements with the blog readers in an attempt to...
Published 30 Jun, 2024 08:29am
Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, the celebrated scion of the Patiala gharana [clan] of our classical music, did wonders when he took to
Published 30 Jun, 2024 08:25am
The memoirs of one of the most respected journalists and editors in the Pakistan documents 80 years in Mahmood Shaam’s life and...
Published 23 Jun, 2024 10:00am
A novel provides a gripping exploration of the complexities of war in Yemen, and captures the raw experiences of humanitarian...
Published 23 Jun, 2024 09:54am
An anthology of Qurratulain Hyder’s selected works translated in English is a good introduction to the doyenne of Urdu literature
Published 23 Jun, 2024 09:47am
In this last column in the series on the Art of Storytelling, I will write about my most recent adventure in storytelling.
Updated 23 Jun, 2024 10:48am
The Romance Writers of America, once the world’s largest and most powerful authors’ association, filed for bankruptcy on May 30,
Published 16 Jun, 2024 07:04am
A new book comprehensively traces the phenomena of Bazball, which has helped make Test cricket exciting again
Published 16 Jun, 2024 07:04am
A young adult novella set in a fictional college tackles contemporary hot-button issues such as social media bullying, sexual...
Published 16 Jun, 2024 07:04am
Based on her PhD dissertation, a book by a legal scholar surveys competition legislation across South Asia and provides insights
Published 16 Jun, 2024 07:04am
Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot detective series is being continued by a new author, who seems to have risen handsomely to the
Published 09 Jun, 2024 09:23am
The author of Pearls and Shards, Iftikhar Malik, is an eminent academic. Now Professor Emeritus at Bath Spa University, he taught
Published 09 Jun, 2024 09:05am
Brig (retd) A. R. Siddiqi’s recollections about city life in Delhi and the advent of cinema culture before Partition transport the
Updated 10 Jun, 2024 12:37pm
What an actor, director, broadcaster and conversationalist Talat Hussain was, truly iconic in so many ways. Just the right pauses
Published 09 Jun, 2024 08:57am
Seldom has a book of poems in English resonated with me as this slender volume, Yardstick of Life. Perhaps the...
Published 02 Jun, 2024 08:09am
A fresh translation of an Urdu novel by the late Altaf Fatima is lucid enough to be read on its own merits
Published 02 Jun, 2024 08:09am
Baidar Bakht’s excellent English translations of selected Urdu poems by Parvin Shere will help bring her the recognition she meri
Published 02 Jun, 2024 08:09am
A relatively slim but erudite and insightful book provides a guided tour, traversing nature, science, economics and politics, into
Published 02 Jun, 2024 08:09am
Feryal Ali-Gauhar’s new novel, set in a remote mountain village, combines commentary on tradition and patriarchy with a magical
Updated 26 May, 2024 09:34am
A book based on a series of lectures uses a philosophical approach to analyse the cultural and spiritual aspects of Iftikhar Arif
Published 26 May, 2024 08:35am
A scholarly treatise attempts to present the history of democracy as well as critique it
Published 26 May, 2024 08:34am
In the first part of this column, I had explained how the Memorise, Connect, Improvise (MCI) method of interactive...
Updated 26 May, 2024 09:31am
A collection of essays by experts analyses the multiple, simultaneous crises facing Pakistan in the political, economic,
Published 19 May, 2024 07:38am
A debut collection of short stories from Bangladesh marks its author as a notable addition to the vibrant storytellers
Published 19 May, 2024 07:38am
A rare and long-awaited collection of fiction from a distinguished man of letters leaves the reader thirsting for more
Published 19 May, 2024 07:38am
I wish to begin this piece with the lines that Hasan Zaidi quoted to end his essay on Paul Auster in Books and...
Published 19 May, 2024 07:38am
he book addresses underdeveloped countries of the world. The author feels that the world at the moment
Published 19 May, 2024 07:38am
Paul Auster, a great American writer of sophistication, innovation and intellect passed away on April 30
Published 12 May, 2024 10:12am
I first ran into Paul Auster completely by chance at Liberty Books in Karachi’s Clifton area in 2003. This was...
Published 12 May, 2024 10:04am
An academic book providing a comparative look at pre- and post-Partition era writing in Urdu literature is an extremely useful...
Published 12 May, 2024 10:01am
“This tale is steeped in the colours of the East and its connection to the conventions of Urdu literature is so deep,” writes...
Published 12 May, 2024 09:56am
The book is a poetic intellectual exploration of Shaikh Ayaz’s selected verses that have been translated from Sindhi into English
Published 12 May, 2024 09:50am
Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Ghazal Cosmopolitan is, in her own words, “part love letter to Urdu… and part manual for the craft of ghazal
Published 05 May, 2024 08:13am
A compilation of Urdu letters written by Japanese academics and students to a Pakistani Urdu scholar is an enriching read for...
Published 05 May, 2024 08:05am
Actor, producer, director, author and voice-over artist Henry Winkler’s memoir is most poignant when he deals with the curse of
Published 05 May, 2024 07:46am
The Bangladeshi-American author Rumaan Alam wrote Leave the World Behind just before the Covid-19 pandemic. The novel was...
Published 05 May, 2024 07:42am
I.A. Rehman’s posthumously published memoirs narrate his early life and the making of one of the greatest human rights activists
Updated 09 May, 2024 03:37pm
A gripping historical drama centring around a young girl and a London bookshop involved in a Cold War espionage network offers a
Published 28 Apr, 2024 10:29am
A recent collection of poetry and poetic prose presents one with a different interpretive angle and nuance of feeling on each...
Published 28 Apr, 2024 10:04am
The names Passchendaele, the Somme and Mametz Wood stand as grim sentinels, forever bound to the unimaginable ...
Published 28 Apr, 2024 09:59am
The author of the book is a petroleum engineer by profession, who has worked in Pakistan and the Middle East for more than 36
Published 28 Apr, 2024 09:50am
Syed Nomanul Haq’s Urdu translation of Mansur al-Hallaj’s Kitab al-Tawasin captures the beauty and elegance of the original...
Published 21 Apr, 2024 10:58am
A French journalist pens a novel about Pakistan which, surprisingly for a Western writer, presents a sympathetic view of the...
Published 21 Apr, 2024 10:51am
A book by a retired Pakistani admiral presents a holistic study of the multifarious challenges of maritime security and offers...
Published 21 Apr, 2024 10:46am
In 2015, it was my honour to be invited by the education advocacy campaign Alif Ailaan to teach storytelling to...
Published 21 Apr, 2024 10:39am
A book provides valuable historic background to the development of Beijing-Islamabad ties but its amassing of ‘facts’ about the...
Published 14 Apr, 2024 07:46am
An autobiography of well-known Pakistani social activist Ansar Burney can serve to inspirea new generation of Pakistanis
Published 14 Apr, 2024 07:42am
A recent book goes behind the scenes to explain the strange case of a Soviet spy’s arrest in the US and trial in 1957, and his...
Published 14 Apr, 2024 07:35am
“Truth is, without an unconditional acknowledgement of the poetic virtues of Akhtar Shirani, an honest history of Urdu literature
Published 14 Apr, 2024 07:29am
An anthology of selected submissions from the first five years of the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women indicates that
Published 07 Apr, 2024 08:27am
A collection of interconnected stories transports one to a fictional place in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa that bears witness to a changing
Published 07 Apr, 2024 08:22am
The autobiography of a pioneering female hospital administrator is an inspirational tale that can help break gender stereotypes
Published 07 Apr, 2024 07:55am
The British actor, director, playwright and critic Harley Granville-Barker (1877-1946) writes in one of his famous prefaces to...
Published 07 Apr, 2024 07:50am
Architect Mukhar Husain’s autobiography is more than just a recounting of his personal journey. It is the story of a whole...
Published 31 Mar, 2024 09:22am
A collection of Urdu short stories lifts the curtain and reveals for us the lives of ordinary people in India, especially its...
Published 31 Mar, 2024 09:08am
A Pakistani diplomat and China expert analyses China’s journey from poverty to prosperity
Published 31 Mar, 2024 09:00am
On a recent visit to Iran, I was shocked at how little I could understand of spoken Persian. I could read and...
Published 31 Mar, 2024 08:52am
Established with a vision to celebrate and empower female voices in literature, The Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing...
Published 31 Mar, 2024 08:02am
Ahmed Saeed’s posthumously published two volumes build on the classical works on Lahore to write a richly painted cultural...
Published 24 Mar, 2024 08:32am
A monograph from an academic hopes to have Pakistan rethink the very ethos of its economy and politics but, while well-intentioned
Published 24 Mar, 2024 08:18am
Muhammad Ali Siddiqi delves into more of his Evergreens from his reading shelf in a seventh installment
Published 24 Mar, 2024 08:13am
In my previous column, I had mentioned that the dozen or so Urdu poets we remember today as the masters of the language, through
Updated 24 Mar, 2024 09:42am
Despite numerous shortcomings in terms of language, a meticulously researched book paints a comprehensive picture of the violence
Published 17 Mar, 2024 08:25am
A reprint of journalist Ibrahim Jalees’ Urdu travelogue from a trip to China in 1951 offers a fascinating look into Chinese vision
Published 17 Mar, 2024 08:20am
Full House star John Stamos’s memoir candidly lays bare the ups and downs of his career and his life
Published 17 Mar, 2024 08:03am
In early 2007 in London, there was a sombre evening when Prof Amin Mughal and I met, a few months after my father’s passing in...
Published 17 Mar, 2024 07:56am
An abridged English translation of eight volumes on the history of the Baloch and their land provides exhaustive information
Published 10 Mar, 2024 07:25am
Peerzada Salman’s latest collection of poems are often about love and its emotional tribulations and range in tone from dark
Published 10 Mar, 2024 07:25am
A collection of offbeat Urdu essays on ordinary and not-so-ordinary travel destinations transforms into poetic reflections
Published 10 Mar, 2024 07:25am
“I’m puzzled. You have Khadija and not Hajira,” Qurratulain Hyder — who mentored my progress in reading...
Published 10 Mar, 2024 07:25am
A comparable development story of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and sectoral data and analysis can be very useful for those who
Published 03 Mar, 2024 08:45am
Pulitzer Prize-winning Hisham Matar’s latest offering is more than just a novel — it is a fine blend of historical fiction,
Published 03 Mar, 2024 08:43am
Urdu poetess Ada Jafarey’s son posthumously translates his mother’s autobiography into English along with some of her work
Published 03 Mar, 2024 08:42am
This year marks the 100th anniversary of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. When he published the novel in 1924, ...
Published 03 Mar, 2024 08:42am
Dr Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer, an articulate voice on cataloguing the Palestinian experience...
Published 25 Feb, 2024 09:45am
The 15th Karachi Literature Festival encouraged many thought-provoking sessions on myriad subjects but was often overshadowed by
Published 25 Feb, 2024 09:36am
A new book presents a serious critical study of Mustansar Hussain Tarar’s novels
Published 25 Feb, 2024 09:32am
Since October 2023, the Israeli bombing in Gaza continues unabated. At the time of writing this piece, the official death toll of
Published 25 Feb, 2024 08:24am
The posthumous publication of a book by a well-respected financial journalist takes stock of Pakistan’s energy politics...
Published 18 Feb, 2024 08:50am
An English translation of an autobiographical French novel by a Chilean immigrant to Canada grapples with coming of age in exile
Published 18 Feb, 2024 08:44am
Josh Maleehabadi’s last poetic collection has been published 41 years after the poet’s death and contains verses not part of Josh
Published 18 Feb, 2024 08:38am
When I began translating Urdu dastaan classics in the late 1990s, I learned very soon that popular dictionaries like Firoz-ul
Published 18 Feb, 2024 08:32am
A pioneering pollster and political scientist offers a compelling read, compiling insights gained from Pakistan’s 11 elections so
Published 11 Feb, 2024 09:39am
An Urdu version of Omar Shahid Hamid’s first novel The Prisoner is a model exhibit of how a good translation can delight on its...
Published 11 Feb, 2024 09:31am
Excavating archival documents and maps, a recent book offers a wealth of source material on Afghanistan’s fraught relationship...
Published 11 Feb, 2024 09:26am
It is often forgotten that, in a social setting, we generally live under the tall shadows of constructed realities. But to say...
Published 11 Feb, 2024 09:22am
Pervez Hoodbhoy’s recent book on the birth of the idea of Pakistan and its shape-shifting over time, is a clinical academic...
Published 04 Feb, 2024 09:38am
An absorbing new Pakistani novel spans timelines from 1964 to 2019 and follows the lives of four friends, painting remarkably...
Updated 04 Feb, 2024 06:38pm
A recent book analyses how a changing socio-spatial landscape is affecting the nature of political relations in Punjab
Published 04 Feb, 2024 09:22am
Muhammad Ziauddin was an exceptionally fine man, a courageous journalist and a watchful editor. We had known each other for many
Published 04 Feb, 2024 09:18am
A re-release of the English translation of a 1974 Palestinian novel is a stark reminder of the brutality of the Israeli occupation
Published 28 Jan, 2024 09:35am
A forensic search and rescue expert takes readers through his day-to-day work experiences and his life
Published 28 Jan, 2024 09:28am
A recent book by a Pakistani author delves into China’s culture and history to try and explain its economic model, along with the
Published 28 Jan, 2024 09:22am
This past year I designed an undergraduate course that I called ‘The Poetry of Love’. One of the challenges of the course was how
Published 28 Jan, 2024 09:15am
A well-argued new book casts an expansive look at the history of technological development and argues that whether technology ends
Published 21 Jan, 2024 09:51am
A long-lost Urdu novel about the Lahore of the 1950s by one of Pakistan’s top filmmakers has been rediscovered and republished
Published 21 Jan, 2024 09:38am
A relatively slim volume belies the enormous value it contains in terms of documentation about the musical heritage of Pakistan...
Published 21 Jan, 2024 09:32am
It is difficult to reckon the breadth of scholarship once commonplace in the knowledge centres of pre-colonial India.
Published 21 Jan, 2024 09:21am
A book makes a formidable effort to collect information and trace sources on the history of the Hindu Sahi dynasty that ruled a...
Published 14 Jan, 2024 09:04am
