In India, Lahore has a unique place in most people’s imagination...
Published 27 Feb, 2022 07:07am
The latest 19th century qissa translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi is a short, vaguely fun read, which will provoke much dis...
Updated 27 Feb, 2022 09:26pm
A Pakistani-American’s slow-simmering novel that explores the inner lives of its characters as they confront events larger than...
Updated 27 Feb, 2022 10:59am
The Crawford Award is presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) for a...
Published 20 Feb, 2022 07:03am
The first issue of Shabkhoon, dated June 1966, was launched in April. My mother’s moral and financial support had...
Updated 21 Feb, 2022 08:49am
An Urdu translation of a 1,100-year-old Japanese novel by a woman courtier, considered the first novel ever written, is a tale...
Published 20 Feb, 2022 07:03am
Racy gossip, illuminating details about foreign lands and an interesting narrative about secrets between husbands and wives...
Published 20 Feb, 2022 07:03am
Three volumes by two former activists offer the first comprehensive and authentic look at student activism that shaped Pakis...
Published 20 Feb, 2022 07:03am
Rereading the abandoned anthologies effects a curious revisionism in one’s literary appreciation...
Published 13 Feb, 2022 09:36am
An academic studies the city and its socio-political past and life through the lens of history, geography and fiction...
Published 13 Feb, 2022 09:35am
A novel sensitively rekindles stories of South Asian families that were driven from their homes by ethnic pogroms in Gen Idi...
Published 13 Feb, 2022 09:33am
A riveting expose of America’s war in Afghanistan, culled entirely from official documents from the CIA, the Pentagon, the Whi...
Published 13 Feb, 2022 09:33am
Activist Anis Haroon’s first book of Urdu poetry is interconnected with her earlier books of prose, and her life’s abiding...
Published 06 Feb, 2022 07:04am
Sarvat Hasin’s take on the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice is a stunning achievement of breathtaking prose, razor-sharp...
Published 06 Feb, 2022 07:04am
A new book by a leading writer on Iranian affairs is a window to understanding the complex internal politics of today’s Iran,...
Published 06 Feb, 2022 07:04am
Global human society deals constantly with a plethora of contradictions that evolve into conflicts, which then...
Published 06 Feb, 2022 07:04am
A widely read food blogger, the author inherited her love for cooking from her mother. Her blogs,...
Published 30 Jan, 2022 07:11am
“This isn’t a self-help book. I hope they don’t shelf [sic] it with the other self-help books in the bookstore. This isn’t a...
Published 30 Jan, 2022 07:11am
A scholar posits that Kashmiri architecture is evidence of a syncretic tradition and identity far earlier than Mughal rule...
Published 30 Jan, 2022 07:11am
Romila Thapar masterfully exposes the Hindutva fallacies that dissent is a colonial import into the Subcontinent, and of a...
Published 30 Jan, 2022 07:11am
A Lebanese-American transgender doctor finds echoes of her own history in a Syrian refugee camp on a Greek island. A tou...
Published 30 Jan, 2022 07:11am
After a sunny Christmas day in Karachi, I left the following dawn for London, aware of the cold, the miniscule days...
Published 23 Jan, 2022 07:06am
Compendium, catalogue, personal narrative and panoramic survey, a new book is a feast of facts about film music from Pakista...
Published 23 Jan, 2022 07:06am
A writer’s confessional memoir about the search for a guru is filled with portraits of several writers, professors, docto...
Published 23 Jan, 2022 07:06am
A collection of essays argues that Pakistan and India’s urbanisation is leading to dispossession, marginalisation and displac...
Published 23 Jan, 2022 07:06am
A work of fiction woven over a framework of facts, this is the story of a man who escaped death in the...
Published 16 Jan, 2022 06:59am
In a thoughtful article in The Guardian about burnout amid Covid-19, Christine Berry wrote: “The pandemic isn’t...
Published 16 Jan, 2022 06:59am
A collection of semi-fictional pieces based on real events and people interrogates American imperialism...
Published 16 Jan, 2022 06:59am
An anthology accomplishes what it set out to do: unravel and collate hidden, neglected tales from Karachi that dig deeper into ...
Published 16 Jan, 2022 06:59am
Harris Khalique’s latest book of poetry celebrates the lives and audaciousness of the marginalised as a way of speaking truth...
Published 16 Jan, 2022 06:59am
A former ambassador’s book offers critical insight and valuable research material on the often-misunderstood relations between...
Published 09 Jan, 2022 07:16am
In 1987, it was the month of November when my classmate Ashraf Noor and I bunked our scheduled visit to a factory in...
Published 09 Jan, 2022 07:16am
An anthropologist’s treatise on the funerary art of Sindh is essential reading for informed laypersons and a priceless record...
Updated 16 Jan, 2022 07:41am
Joan Didion, who passed away December 23, always kept faith with the written word. Her attention to the craft of writing...
Published 09 Jan, 2022 07:16am
A new series of old Urdu ‘qissas’, along with their English translations, is being published in Pakistan. The first revolves...
Published 02 Jan, 2022 09:40am
The more I read from the Urdu classics, the more I want to translate these great stories, and the more I translate, the more...
Published 02 Jan, 2022 09:31am
Aamer Hussein’s creative memoir is a book of such great riches and, indeed, courage, that it is difficult to put it down
Published 02 Jan, 2022 09:26am
I’ve been cleaning out closets; dusting bookshelves packed with love. Every book in this big room, every artefact, photograph...
Published 02 Jan, 2022 09:22am
Celebrating a talented player who started out as a 13-year-old ball-picker in 2007 and went on to captain Pakistan’s national...
Published 02 Jan, 2022 09:20am
During the final decade of the Raj, when I lived with my Sialkoti family in Bombay [Mumbai], which attracted natives from...
Published 26 Dec, 2021 07:01am
Salman Rashid’s lovingly written and beautifully produced treatise is a perfect travel companion to those who wish to visit Gwadar
Published 26 Dec, 2021 07:01am
A memoir traces several displacements, from Kashmir to Britain to Karachi and East Pakistan and offers a rare look in the window
Published 26 Dec, 2021 07:01am
Mustansar Hussain Tarar’s latest works, as always, negotiate the ‘gap’ between imagined and real worlds, between what the...
Updated 26 Dec, 2021 04:30pm
When eminent psychologist Alicia Edward’s own mental health begins to deteriorate, her husband Omar, who is a South African
Published 19 Dec, 2021 07:05am
I consider the translation of literary works a great service to humanity, yet the effort put into translation seldom...
Published 19 Dec, 2021 07:05am
A debut collection of essays is a medical resident’s coronavirus diary as well as a book of big ideas about family, migration...
Published 19 Dec, 2021 07:05am
Spanning the months from 1970’s election results to the break-up of Pakistan in 1971, a novella brings out the broader human,
Published 19 Dec, 2021 07:05am
A new book makes for a good, reflective piece on Pakistan’s myriad education issues, but especially about the medium of
Published 19 Dec, 2021 07:05am
Despite his belligerence, his frequent quarrels and abruptness, and his preoccupation with the weird, frightening...
Updated 12 Dec, 2021 02:59pm
A political scientist proposes an alternative model for governance in the part of the disputed region under Pakistan’s admi...
Published 12 Dec, 2021 06:54am
Saad Shafqat is a leading neurologist at Karachi’s prestigious Aga Khan University Hospital and cricket columnist...
Published 12 Dec, 2021 06:54am
In Saad Shafqat’s vibrant and page-turner medical drama, two surgeons find themselves pitted against each other for the...
Published 12 Dec, 2021 06:54am
Arif Mahmood’s handsome book of photographs taken at Sufi shrines over 32 years is not simply an ethnographic documentation...
Published 05 Dec, 2021 07:01am
There isn’t only love for a person; there is your love for your everyday things. I love nature above all. It attracts me more...
Published 05 Dec, 2021 07:01am
George Saunders’s latest book, about the craft of writing, is a peek into what a classroom helmed by the award-winning writer...
Published 05 Dec, 2021 07:01am
A debut novel, about childhood trauma and how it can change us and continue to shape us as adults, makes for some voyeuristic...
Published 05 Dec, 2021 07:01am
Regular readers will know I’ve been thinking about pandemic literature since Covid-19 went global in early 2020. A...
Published 28 Nov, 2021 07:08am
A compilation of essays on feminism in Urdu is a welcome development, but could have been better thought through...
Published 28 Nov, 2021 07:08am
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world’s largest book fair and this year was also the first physical book fair since the...
Published 28 Nov, 2021 07:08am
Mustafa Akyol’s latest book is another open invitation to critically examine the popular Islamic discourse about a value that...
Published 28 Nov, 2021 07:08am
A British-Pakistani poet’s satirical epic is fine poetry delivered through playful lyrical flourishes woven with astute...
Published 21 Nov, 2021 07:32am
Soon after his five-year labour of love and determination — his book Once Upon a Time in Murree — was published,...
Published 21 Nov, 2021 07:32am
Murree of yore, both colonial and postcolonial, comes alive in the pages of this showstopper of a coffee table book,...
Published 21 Nov, 2021 07:32am
The review of Javed Jabbar’s book “But Prime Minister...” by Safiya Aftab, published in Books and Authors on...
Published 21 Nov, 2021 07:32am
In these times of death, disease, depression and sorrow, we have lost many literary stalwarts, from Shamsur Rahman...
Published 21 Nov, 2021 07:32am
The winner of this year’s Zeenat Haroon Rashid (ZHR) Writing Prize for Women is Alia Ahmed for her short story...
Published 14 Nov, 2021 07:13am
What is the Urdu for ‘fiddle dee dee’, or the English for ‘Sarra rara rara’? Are those words really English...
Updated 15 Nov, 2021 11:13am
An excellent anthology of writers muses on what it means to be displaced from one’s origins and to be Sindhi outside in the...
Published 14 Nov, 2021 07:13am
A former diplomat-turned-wanderer attempts to unearth the soul of places he visits
by connecting them to writers and artists...
Published 14 Nov, 2021 07:13am
A debut novel weaves together a picture of denizens of Karachi who have had enough of being pushed around and who decide to...
Updated 14 Nov, 2021 12:38pm
In this very important book for parents, caregivers and educators to share with children, the author...
Published 07 Nov, 2021 07:03am
Those of us who thought of ourselves as serious writers at the time dismissed the Booker as designed to promote popular writers...
Published 07 Nov, 2021 07:03am
A brilliant new book consolidates a large, understudied and unseen part of the visual documentation of the times of the...
Published 07 Nov, 2021 07:03am
With good and bad feudals, a love triangle and nods to other hot-button contemporary issues, this novel could very well be...
Published 07 Nov, 2021 07:03am
Benazir Bhutto during her first tenure as prime minister at the PTV headquarters, Islamabad, in 1988 with PTV’s...
Updated 16 Nov, 2021 08:38pm
Fantasy fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft once said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the...
Published 31 Oct, 2021 07:05am
A new translation provides insights for history lovers and academics into 18th and 19th century wars in Sindh, Hind and...
Published 31 Oct, 2021 07:05am
Peerzada Salman’s first collection of short stories is a musing on life and mortality, love and estrangement, and memory and...
Published 31 Oct, 2021 07:05am
An enjoyable Young Adult novel centred on Pakistani American teenagers clearly showcases the author’s lived experience, which...
Published 31 Oct, 2021 07:05am
With the help of plenty of photographs, some newspaper clippings and a host of other personal
Published 24 Oct, 2021 06:24am
This is how Faiz softens human suffering, turning chains into silk threads. It is supremely remarkable that here is an acti...
Updated 24 Oct, 2021 11:45am
Abdulrazak Gurnah is only the second person of sub-Saharan African origin to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 120 years...
Published 24 Oct, 2021 06:24am
A travel show host’s first book of English poems is evidence of his romanticism, his love of nature and his ability to impal...
Updated 28 Oct, 2021 04:26pm
Zain Saeed’s quintessentially Pakistani, fast-paced debut novel written with elegance and humour will most certainly be appr...
Published 24 Oct, 2021 06:24am
Akbar, my occasional partner at literary Snakes and Ladders, wants to write a story with me as its main character. It’s taken him
Published 17 Oct, 2021 06:39am
A book celebrates and dissects Adeela Suleman’s art which focuses on the relationship between death, violence, power.
Updated 17 Oct, 2021 12:52pm
Zaitoon Bano, whose illustrious literary career had an undeniable impact on Pashto literature and Pakhtun culture, passed away
Published 17 Oct, 2021 06:39am
Mustansar Hussain Tarar’s latest travelogue documents a valuable part of Cuban society, in contrast to the usual discussion around
Published 17 Oct, 2021 06:39am
At the very outset, the author clarifies that this is not a translation of his memoirs, published in Urdu as Yaadon Ke...
Published 10 Oct, 2021 06:36am
Sally Rooney is everywhere just now because her eagerly-awaited third novel came out on September 7. In Beautiful...
Published 10 Oct, 2021 06:36am
A valuable addition to political science literature on ethnic studies attempts to cover all sides of Sindh’s politics...
Published 10 Oct, 2021 06:36am
A handsome coffee table book about the various religions in Pakistan could have done with better attention to editorial and...
Published 10 Oct, 2021 06:36am
A sophomore novel explores the relationships individuals have with others and the mental disturbances and emotional baggage...
Published 10 Oct, 2021 06:36am
An important documentation of popular Thari folk songs not only introduces the reader to their rustic beauty, but also...
Published 03 Oct, 2021 07:11am
An utterly gripping story about the life of an Austrian Nazi war criminal who was indicted for mass murder, but escaped...
Published 03 Oct, 2021 07:11am
Masjid Qasim Ali Khan is a historic landmark in the city of Peshawar. Built in the late 17th century, this 350-year...
Published 03 Oct, 2021 07:11am
Books that have been long companions...
Published 03 Oct, 2021 07:11am
A collection of essays on the women’s movement in Pakistan brings the past and present together in a valuable resource that
Published 26 Sep, 2021 11:56am
A new novel paints Pakistan as a portrait that acts as a kind of mirror, which reveals the dissipation of our resources, and our
Published 26 Sep, 2021 11:51am
