Five contemporary books about Pakistan by English writers from the country to pick up
Pakistan is known for its Urdu literature but, in recent years, the country has also produced a number of promising English writers. Writing Pakistan: Conversations on Identity, Nationhood and Fiction (HarperCollins, 2016) by Mushtaq Bilal is an upcoming collection of interviews with Pakistani English novelists including Bapsi Sidhwa, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie and Mohammed Hanif, among other big names. Some of the issues Bilal discusses with them are self-censorship, the intended audiences of these writers, and the politics of literary representation.
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Mushtaq Bilal
We asked Bilal to pick five contemporary books from Pakistan that should be on the reading list of anyone trying to understand the country. Here are his picks.
Daddy's Boy by Shandana Minhas (Fiction)
Daddy's Boy (HarperCollins, 2016) is yet another novel in the growing body of contemporary Pakistani English fiction that chronicles and romances the city of Karachi. Set against the backdrop of 2013 general elections, it is a story of Asfandyar Ikram, a young man of 30, who happens to come to Karachi for the first time in his life to claim inheritance after his estranged father, Anis Nabi, has died. In Karachi, Ikram meets three of his father's closest friends — Ifty, Shaukoo, and Gullo — and through them, he discovers the kind of man his daddy was. Through her characters, Minhas seamlessly weaves the personal and the political and offers a social commentary about life in Karachi, which is at once harsh and hilarious. A racy plot, her characters' witty repartee, and Minhas's pared-down, energetic prose make Daddy's Boy a riveting read.
Love and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz – The Authorized Biography by Ali Madeeh Hashmi (Biography)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz is considered one of the greatest Urdu poets of the twentieth century. A committed Marxist and a revolutionary poet, Faiz redefined the vocabulary of Urdu poetry. While there is, understandably, no dearth of scholarship (in Urdu) on Faiz's life and works, Hashmi's biography of the poet Love and Revolution (Rupa, 2016) holds a unique position since he happens to be a grandson of the poet. Drawing on personal recollections of Faiz's daughters — Moneeza and Salima — among others and on Faiz's personal archives, Hashmi's highly readable biography provides valuable and fresh insights into Faiz — the man and the poet. Hashmi's book is essential reading not only for Faiz aficionados but also for anyone who wants to know about the life and times of one of the most admired and extraordinary Pakistanis.
The Spinner's Tale by Omar Shahid Hamid (Fiction)
The author followed his bestselling crime thriller The Prisoner (Pan Macmillan, 2013) with The Spinner's Tale (Pan Macmillan, 2015). The latter is the story of how Sheikh Ahmed Uzair Sufi, a brilliant young man with a secular upbringing, metamorphoses into a radical jihadist. Although a few twists in the plot might look contrived, The Spinner's Tale is a gripping read. According to Dr Saeed ur Rehman, who teaches South Asian literature at the Forman Christian College, Lahore, Hamid's novel "shows the complexity of Pakistan in all its forms. A jihadist is trained at an elite educational institution. He keeps in touch with the Christian janitor of his school and also mixes his love for the ultra-puritanical path with his passion for cricket. It is a messy world and the novel captures it beautifully."
The Upstairs Wife by Rafia Zakaria (Memoir)
Rafia Zakaria's The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan (Beacon Press, 2015) is part memoir, part political history told from the point of view of a Mohajir woman. According to the well-known Pakistani literary critic and editor Muneeza Shamsie, Zakaria's book is "a well-written, beautifully structured and moving creative memoir which tells the story of the author's paternal aunt, Amina, who finds herself trapped in a bigamous marriage when her husband, Sohail, remarries." Following the Quranic injunction to do 'perfect justice,' Sohail divides his time equally between his two wives. Zakaria pairs every personal event with a political one and while this pairing does not always work, what her narrative successfully accomplishes is the documentation of the emotional toll bigamy takes on a woman.
In Search of Shiva by Haroon Khalid (Non-fiction)
Since Partition, the nation-state of Pakistan has tried to forge an Islamic identity. This process involves a deliberate attempt at wiping out the pre-colonial and pre-Islamic syncretic traditions, which have been practised by the natives of this region for centuries. Haroon Khalid's book In Search of Shiva: A Study of Folk Religious Practices in Pakistan (Rupa, 2015) is an attempt to counter the mainstream Pakistani narrative, which looks down upon indigenous cultural practices. Khalid was "surprised to come across Muslim shrines of phallic offerings, sacred dogs and holy cows [in Pakistan]. They challenged [his] conventional understanding of Islam and also Pakistani national identity." It's a must-read for those interested in understanding how ancient South Asian traditions have survived in Pakistan.
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