What do I say? And what do I write? My eyes have lost their vision, and my heart its joy. Hands tremble, And my...
Updated 15 Oct, 2017 06:35pm
October 17 marks the bicentennial of the birth of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who exerted a defining influence on Indian Muslim
Updated 17 Oct, 2019 12:04pm
A worthy sequel to a YA novel is heavier and darker than the first
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
A historical-materialistic approach analysing the Granth Sahib opens up new ways of reading the spiritual and cultural
Updated 16 Jan, 2020 11:27am
I recently met up with British-Pakistani author Qaisra Shahraz at her house in Manchester to discuss The Concubine...
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
An English translation of a well-known Urdu poet, novelist and short story writer’s autobiography captures
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
A stark exposition of the conditions of women prisoners in Pakistan and a brave teenager’s remarkable personal struggle
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
Dr Syed Qasim Jalal ka Adbi Safar: Nisf Sadi Ka Qissa Dr Sajjad Haider Parvez Written with the intent to provide
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
As we approach the second birth centenary of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, he is being criticised to the extent of being...
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
A pictorial of the multiple religions practiced in Pakistan is a reminder of how far we’ve strayed from our founder’s
Published 08 Oct, 2017 06:38am
Mohsin Hamid recommends Pereira Maintains by Antonio TabucchiExit West, Mohsin Hamid’s fourth novel about ...
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
Dao Paich M. Naeem Abrar A collection of articles on serious issues, yet written with a humorous slant, with such
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
Art has the large embrace and inherent capacity to divulge complex emotions. It can rise above the mundane to make ...
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
Commemorative stones of the Thar Desert tell long-forgotten tales of heroes, loyalty and valour
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
A story that depicts the strength of women and the desperate attempts to retain cultural identity in the face of erasure
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
A new translation presents a fully restored and uncensored version of a classic about Russian women who enlisted
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. One day, while strolling about in a dark wood, she...
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
Master storyteller Ismat Chughtai often strips away the rose-tinted hues with which
reminiscences of childhood
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
A pilgrimage to his soul made Karbala the voice of Iftikhar Arif’s expression
Published 01 Oct, 2017 04:25am
An imaginative debut that veers away from the tried and tested formula of Pakistani English-language fiction
Published 24 Sep, 2017 06:42am
I have been exploring Goethe’s concept of ‘world literature’ for a while. The questions Goethe raised become...
Published 24 Sep, 2017 06:42am
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Paul Auster’s latest novel is his magnum opus, but is a dense and cerebral book
Published 24 Sep, 2017 06:42am
Far from a hagiography, an American historian’s latest book on Emperor Aurangzeb explodes widely held myths about
Published 24 Sep, 2017 06:42am
Lately it has become fashionable for the affluent and the nouveau riche in metropolitan Pakistan to mock and...
Published 24 Sep, 2017 06:42am
A snapshot of mountain crafts before urbanisation seeps in
Published 24 Sep, 2017 06:42am
A translation of Bertolt Brecht’s poetry seasons universal thoughts with local flavour
Updated 25 Sep, 2017 01:57pm
Half a century ago, a competition for a first book of poems, to be judged by W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, for...
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
What could have inspired the personal assistant of a stage actor in the Victorian era to pen one of the most ...
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
“Well, people from your part of the world spend their weekends in London watching cheap Bollywood thrillers at ...
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
A collection of diverse ideas on India shows that common ground between India and Pakistan is still very substantial
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
Amjad Ali Khadim’s collection of poems addresses the turmoil of the present world
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
An inventive crime thriller that blurs the line between legality and moral question
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
Short stories from the Frenchman writing in Urdu explore literary truths about famous Pakistanis
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
Arundhati Roy’s new novel, longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, is a story of persecution, albeit one in which
Published 17 Sep, 2017 07:01am
Could the shattering of Greece’s economy in 2015 be a deliberate attempt to maintain imbalance in the European Union?
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
A debut novel that has all the elements of a rollicking good ride, but falls somewhat short of the mark
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
The veteran journalist, broadcaster and fiction writer has collected 75 columns written by him between 2008 and 2014
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
We live in a society where for weeks, the headline news on television revolved around the patchy conjugal life of a...
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
A proposal for global governance neglects to account for key factors
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
History is temporal. The historical model tends to build walls between eras, creating boxes of time. Literary texts...
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
Of course the question of how I feel about Daesh is black and white.
Updated 10 Sep, 2017 12:11pm
A modern retelling of an ancient classic spotlights today’s multicultural world caught up in the web of racism
Published 10 Sep, 2017 07:04am
While observers and analysts of Pakistani Anglophone literature focus exclusively on writers and authors, they ...
Published 03 Sep, 2017 07:54am
A former member of the Afghan Mujahideen recounts his experience of living through a war
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
Muhammad Ali Siddiqi’s memoirs Waiting for Dawn: 50 Years of Turbulent History as Seen Through the Eyes of a...
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
Kamila Shamsie’s new novel Home Fire, now longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has already been hailed as one of...
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
“Faster than fairies, faster than witches/ Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches.” Robert Louis Stevenson’s...
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
Ayesha Karim, co-founder and COO of Alexi, explains how the service enlists the help of authors and other cultural
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
Despite obvious differences, the lives of those who have made it in the world and those who want to make it, are not all
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
A spy novel set in 16th century Venice features the Bard as a young man caught up in an action-packed escapade
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
Writer, poet, scholar and broadcaster Dr Aslam Farrukhi’s pen-sketches are a unique treat
Published 01 Sep, 2017 07:54am
As technology evolves at exponential speed, the challenge is to ensure companies survive and adapt instead of becoming
Published 27 Aug, 2017 07:00am
Dr Ruth Pfau’s raison d’être is of greater relevance to Pakistan’s existential questions.
Updated 28 Aug, 2017 12:59pm
In August 2007, when smartphones and social media ‘connections’ weren’t ubiquitous, I returned to London from...
Published 27 Aug, 2017 07:00am
How the famous Government College, Lahore, established in 1864, became a full-fledged university
Published 27 Aug, 2017 07:00am
The leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour party will now be the newest superhero on the block to boast of his own...
Published 27 Aug, 2017 07:00am
Irony is wasted on the young.The first time that kids born during the Monica Lewinsky scandal were old enough to ...
Published 27 Aug, 2017 07:00am
Concluding the series exploring Pakistani Urdu writing over the past 70 years
Published 27 Aug, 2017 07:00am
The darling of Indian cinema from the 1960s and ’70s has decided that now is the time to tell all
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
Khwaab aur Mausam Aziz Ejaz A television producer who has served state-run media for 32 years, Aziz Ejaz’s collection
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
Each of the five stories here tends to fly in its own direction
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
A thesis explicating how modern perceptions of jihad are misconstrued from original meanings has its own set of problems
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
I have a weakness for science made simple. For three years now I have been struggling through medical research and...
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
A sprawling novel that shows human suffering remains the same irrespective of time
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
How the human body changed from being a passive recipient of bullets into a deadly weapon in itself
Published 20 Aug, 2017 07:52am
Despite the love between them, lifelong companionship was not meant to be for ‘Ruttie’ and ‘J’
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 12:07pm
Bite-sized pieces of life experience, wisdom and nostalgia
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 11:54am
It is not possible to define the great and the sublime without the ordinary and the ridiculous
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 12:46pm
On Aug 14, 1947, the Pakistani nation was born out of boundless bloodshed. What followed — an unprecedented ...
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 12:39pm
A wealth of information about famous incidents and fascinating inhabitants of the Walled City
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 12:29pm
The Quran and Universe: Astronomy in the Light of Quran and Modern Science Ghulam HasanScientific interpretation of...
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 12:09pm
Understanding the city through the prism of ‘conflict in motion’
Updated 15 Aug, 2017 12:52pm
A longlist of 13 books — the Booker’s dozen — was recently announced by the Man Booker judging panel. The list...
Updated 07 Aug, 2017 02:52pm
“It has always almost been the case that the gift which has spoken so commandingly to my soul has been a printed...
Updated 07 Aug, 2017 02:53pm
A fascinating history of Urdu poetry written during the Progressive Writers’ Movement casts a wider historical net
Updated 07 Aug, 2017 02:49pm
An Indian expat’s debut short story collection shines a spotlight on the less glamorous side of Dubai and Abu Dhabi
Updated 20 Jul, 2018 12:42am
Haruki Murakami’s new short story collection delves into the darkness of the distanced soul
Updated 07 Aug, 2017 02:33pm
This book about card catalogues — The Card Catalogue: Books, Cards and Literary Treasures — written and ...
Updated 07 Aug, 2017 02:25pm
The history of drama in the subcontinent told through the stories of 10 stars of the stage
Updated 07 Aug, 2017 02:21pm
The grey, but welcoming café and bar at the Institute of Education in London was a regular haunt of Professor Amin...
Updated 01 Aug, 2017 12:55pm
Part 10 of the series exploring Pakistani Urdu writing over the past 70 years
Updated 01 Aug, 2017 12:52pm
A compact, multi-layered portrait of family conflict and the insecurities of bourgeois life
Updated 01 Aug, 2017 12:20pm
A former journalist pens a candid and brash autobiography
Updated 01 Aug, 2017 12:15pm
The phrase ‘pretty wrongs’ comes from the first line of William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 41’, a line that...
Updated 01 Aug, 2017 12:05pm
A simple explanation of scientific principles reveals the fascinating workings behind the most banal of phenomena
Updated 31 Jul, 2017 05:11pm
Acclaimed scholar and storyteller Naiyer Masud passed away on July 24, 2017, at the age of 80
Updated 31 Jul, 2017 05:05pm
A comprehensive work on Sindh’s medieval history that demolishes commonly accepted notions
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 03:45pm
To mark the 200th death anniversary of one of the most celebrated writers of English literature, the Bank of England...
Published 23 Jul, 2017 07:29am
It was past midnight when, in a half-lit room of the Beach Luxury Hotel in Karachi, dampened by sea breeze and mist,...
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 04:20pm
From ancient, deep-frozen woolly mammoths to spiders aboard space stations, what animals can teach humans is astounding
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 04:16pm
A disturbing tale of love and revenge that highlights the apathy of a country towards its unwanted women
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 04:07pm
An examination of why post-Islamist movements are unable to transform into populist social movements
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 04:12pm
We tend to imagine readers, an increasingly uncommon breed, as silent and usually solitary beings, but they have not...
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 03:58pm
A song takes on a life of its own, and lays bare the history of cultural appropriation
Updated 24 Jul, 2017 03:54pm
It’s Business, It’s Personal: From Setting a Vision to Driving it Through Organisational Excellence
Saad...
Published 16 Jul, 2017 07:38am
I could feel the weight of betrayal and loss, remorse and sadness, after watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley,...
Published 16 Jul, 2017 07:38am
An eye-opening memoir of a woman who took on the patriarchy to secure the rights of her country’s people
Published 16 Jul, 2017 07:38am
A tale of loss, grief and eventual redemption told from the perspective of a dislocated child
Published 16 Jul, 2017 07:38am
Set against the backdrop of Lebanon’s civil war, a story of tragedy and self-loathing
Published 16 Jul, 2017 07:38am
