A memoir about growing up in India-occupied Kashmir in the 1980s and ’90s shows how the pursuit of a normal life becomes an...
Published 29 May, 2022 08:25am
A public intellectual attempts to map out the doctrinal and historical basis for a framework for economic activity and social...
Published 29 May, 2022 08:09am
A glossy coffee table book with high production values is educational and can open up doors to new avenues of interest among
Published 29 May, 2022 07:59am
The Progressive-Marxist Writers’ Movement in Urdu of the 1930s had created space for ‘revolutionary poetry’....
Updated 29 May, 2022 10:20am
Covering the first eight decades of the 20th century, a book by the illustrious Muslim author from India is for readers who wish
Published 22 May, 2022 11:09am
Ranging across Balochistan, the Waseb, Sindh, Oman and Africa, Muhammad Amir Rana’s latest novel is about characters who live in
Published 22 May, 2022 10:57am
Muhammad Ali Siddiqi continues combing through his library for those books to which he keeps returning
Published 22 May, 2022 10:04am
When asked a question about their contemporaries, famous established poets dodge giving an answer, for it would ...
Published 22 May, 2022 10:01am
An inspiring book of personal narratives from across the world reflects the enormous changes taking place in the lives of women
Published 15 May, 2022 10:03am
A slow-burner of a novel has a quirkily intriguing protagonist, but is hampered by the author’s surprising lack of control over
Published 15 May, 2022 09:57am
Former diplomat Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry’s memoir provides a full background of almost all foreign affairs issues relating to Pakistan
Published 15 May, 2022 09:40am
Hoori Noorani of the publishing house Maktaba-e-Danyal told me some months ago that she had found some fascinating...
Published 15 May, 2022 09:35am
After the miserable conditions of a government hospital in Setpur, as featured in the author’s earlier novel Tholly, readers get
Published 15 May, 2022 09:28am
Two respected academics’ book about the genesis and nature of the contemporary crisis in the country’s media is a valuable...
Published 08 May, 2022 09:42am
A slim volume by a Marxist historian theorises without pulling punches how the Pakistani state manifests its control over the...
Published 08 May, 2022 09:30am
A dream-like debut novel indicates clearly that its author has both talent and a gifted intellect, despite its deficiencies in...
Published 08 May, 2022 09:24am
“Myths, legends, tales, they are all part of our heritage which mark the way we think, live and see the world,”...
Published 08 May, 2022 09:17am
A new book is history from the perspective of a woman who experienced so much of it and an important chronology of how Pakistan
Published 01 May, 2022 10:27am
Combining an intriguing plot with fascinating characters and a tragic conclusion, a 19th century qissa is an excellent read that
Published 01 May, 2022 10:19am
Murtuza Y. Mandviwalla — chairman and CEO of the Mandviwalla Motors Group — has spent over 40 years in...
Updated 01 May, 2022 06:38pm
I have written more than once about a fascinating, deeply meaningful and yet, at first glance, somewhat odd beseeching of a very
Published 01 May, 2022 10:01am
A scholarly new book endeavours to unravel how the Subcontinent’s 19th century Muslim community came to see itself as a nation
Updated 26 Apr, 2022 02:30pm
A scholar of environmental studies traces the linkages between Pakistani women’s creative works and eco-feminism
Published 24 Apr, 2022 07:19am
In many ways, John le Carre’s swansong, Silverview, is an affirmation of his brilliance as one of the last great...
Updated 24 Apr, 2022 02:08pm
During a holiday from the school I was teaching at in mid-1990s Peshawar, I was fortunate to spend a few days in...
Published 24 Apr, 2022 07:08am
Arif Hasan’s writings on land and housing are an example of engaged scholarship, an effort to find ways to create a future city...
Published 17 Apr, 2022 11:11am
Traversing issues of exile, identity, mental illness, love, grief, parenthood, superstition and the environment, Elif Shafak’s...
Published 17 Apr, 2022 11:05am
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
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
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
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
The Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women is now open for submissions in the nonfiction category.
The...
Published 03 Apr, 2022 07:33am
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
A superb and well-researched recounting of the wartime sinking of an Indian vessel by a Pakistani submarine
Updated 16 Mar, 2022 04:58pm
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 recently published book deeply enhances our knowledge of transport in Karachi, offering fertile ground for debate and disc...
Published 06 Mar, 2022 07:01am
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 fascinating book looks at our relationship to language, especially language rooted in far-away soils...
Updated 06 Mar, 2022 12:27pm
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a colonial subject from the small Caribbean island of Martinique, then a...
Published 06 Mar, 2022 07:01am
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
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 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
In India, Lahore has a unique place in most people’s imagination...
Published 27 Feb, 2022 07:07am
This compilation of essays, book reviews and pen sketches, published in Pakistani newspapers over the...
Published 27 Feb, 2022 07:07am
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Global human society deals constantly with a plethora of contradictions that evolve into conflicts, which then...
Published 06 Feb, 2022 07:04am
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
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 scholar posits that Kashmiri architecture is evidence of a syncretic tradition and identity far earlier than Mughal rule...
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 widely read food blogger, the author inherited her love for cooking from her mother. Her blogs,...
Published 30 Jan, 2022 07:11am
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 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
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
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
A collection of semi-fictional pieces based on real events and people interrogates American imperialism...
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 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
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
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
A former ambassador’s book offers critical insight and valuable research material on the often-misunderstood relations between...
Published 09 Jan, 2022 07:16am
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
