A book attempts to discover the various influences, the evolution and development of our syncretic culture and ethos
Published 17 Apr, 2022 10:59am
Medical doctor and writer Arshad Waheed has been on the literary map for some decades now. His first Urdu novel —...
Published 17 Apr, 2022 10:54am
A cultural historian spins a yarn about a fictional state and its women that is full of captivating social and historical details
Published 10 Apr, 2022 09:43am
Pakistan’s late eminent physicist Riazuddin is the main canvas on which several crucial stories, particularly about Pakistan’s...
Published 10 Apr, 2022 09:37am
A long time ago — perhaps in the 1970s — I observed my father, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, leafing through...
Updated 17 Apr, 2022 04:00pm
For quite some years, the author has penned a regular column for Dawn’s op-ed pages on the political situation of Pakistan.
Published 10 Apr, 2022 09:22am
The technological revolution at the end of the 20th century eliminated the audience for interviews with poets...
Updated 10 Apr, 2022 09:03am
Two journalist-authors discuss the roadblocks for new talent in Pakistan’s publishing industry...
Published 03 Apr, 2022 07:51am
A poetry collection in which the poet is able to successfully entwine his feelings with those of the well-known poets while...
Published 03 Apr, 2022 07:51am
Sara Suleri Goodyear (1953-2022) was perhaps best known for her memoir Meatless Days, but a close friend and collaborator rem...
Updated 05 Apr, 2022 09:31am
The Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women is now open for submissions in the nonfiction category.
The...
Published 03 Apr, 2022 07:33am
It is ironic that when politicians in power are facing the Ides of March, the literary community in Pakistan is...
Published 27 Mar, 2022 07:06am
Translating world literature into Urdu, despite its social benefits, is often a thankless job. Who, then, are the passionate...
Updated 28 Mar, 2022 05:25pm
Two economists from Pakistan and India delve into the intellectual aspects of Ghalib’s Urdu poetry and offer a primer for a...
Published 27 Mar, 2022 07:06am
Despite the unseasonably warm weather, the Lahore Literary Festival’s return to an in-person event showed that festival audien...
Published 27 Mar, 2022 07:06am
The 11th-12th century polymath, Abu Hamid Ghazali (known in the mediaeval Latin West as Algazel, and sometimes as...
Published 20 Mar, 2022 07:17am
Some books on China, Japan, Mongolia and Russia, as well as a few very insightful works on the Arab world
Published 20 Mar, 2022 07:17am
A debut novel follows a disillusioned journalist who escapes from the suffocation of his homeland, only to find himself unable to
Published 20 Mar, 2022 07:17am
A civil servant shares his experiences of the less-discussed remote areas of Pakistan in a well-written seminal book that also...
Published 20 Mar, 2022 07:17am
There’s a tree, not far from my home, that blooms for about a fortnight. No one has yet been able to tell me...
Published 13 Mar, 2022 07:12am
A superb and well-researched recounting of the wartime sinking of an Indian vessel by a Pakistani submarine
Updated 16 Mar, 2022 04:58pm
An academic discourse on the Pakistani state’s and the Taliban’s constructions of legitimacy argues that sovereignty is a...
Published 13 Mar, 2022 07:12am
The return to a physical event made this year’s Karachi Literature Festival a resounding success. It gave back to us the feeling
Published 13 Mar, 2022 07:12am
A fascinating book looks at our relationship to language, especially language rooted in far-away soils...
Updated 06 Mar, 2022 12:27pm
The second novel in a detective series set in an old-age care facility is a wonderful blend of drama, humour, thrill and sent...
Published 06 Mar, 2022 07:01am
A recently published book deeply enhances our knowledge of transport in Karachi, offering fertile ground for debate and disc...
Published 06 Mar, 2022 07:01am
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a colonial subject from the small Caribbean island of Martinique, then a...
Published 06 Mar, 2022 07:01am
This compilation of essays, book reviews and pen sketches, published in Pakistani newspapers over the...
Published 27 Feb, 2022 07:07am
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
A veteran social scientist’s new book, a culmination of decades of research and teaching, connects the dots of conflict from...
Published 27 Feb, 2022 07:07am
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
Global human society deals constantly with a plethora of contradictions that evolve into conflicts, which then...
Published 06 Feb, 2022 07:04am
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
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
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 former ambassador’s book offers critical insight and valuable research material on the often-misunderstood relations between...
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
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
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 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
