Download or read book Writing Pakistan written by Mushtaq Bilal and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2016-08-10 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be an English-language fiction writer in a country that is perpetually on the brink of disaster? In this first-ever collection of interviews with Pakistani novelists writing in English, Mushtaq Bilal explores how fictions are informed by the authors' cultural identities. Is it possible, for instance, to write about Pakistan without self-censoring? How do writers contest and challenge Western stereotypes of the country? Do they even consciously do that? And what about challenging Pakistani stereotypes of the West?Providing fresh insights into some of the most important and politically engaged contemporary fiction to come out of the subcontinent, Writing Pakistan is essential reading for anyone interested in the art of storytelling, in books and in Pakistan itself - because to understand a nation, one needs to talk to those who are writing it.
Download or read book The Nine Lives of Pakistan Dispatches from a Precarious State written by Declan Walsh and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country. Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times’s most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to the mountains of Waziristan. He met a diverse cast of extraordinary Pakistanis—a chieftain readying for war at his desert fort, a retired spy skulking through the borderlands, and a crusading lawyer risking death for her beliefs, among others. Through these “nine lives” he describes a country on the brink—a place of creeping extremism and political chaos, but also personal bravery and dogged idealism that defy easy stereotypes. Unbeknownst to Walsh, however, an intelligence agent was tracking him. Written in the aftermath of Walsh’s abrupt deportation, The Nine Lives of Pakistan concludes with an astonishing encounter with that agent, and his revelations about Pakistan’s powerful security state. Intimate and complex, attuned to the centrifugal forces of history, identity, and faith, The Nine Lives of Pakistan offers an unflinching account of life in a precarious, vital country.
Download or read book Testing Creative Writing in Pakistan written by Humaira Irfan and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the impact of creative writing tests on classroom practice in Pakistan. All National Education Policies in Pakistan since 1959 have expressed grave concern at the deteriorating standard of Board Examinations but no significant steps have been taken to improve the examination system. The method of assessment in the Pakistani classroom is influenced by the Board Examinations, with the students memorising the essays and stories from their textbooks and reproducing them. The Board Examination tends to produce negative washback as it damages learners’ creative talents. Appropriate changes in the textbooks and the external examination, however, will, in turn, definitely improve the teaching and assessment practices in the classroom.
Download or read book The Faithful Scribe written by Shahan Mufti and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist explores his family’s history to reveal the hybrid cultural and political landscape of Pakistan, the world’s first Islamic democracy Shahan Mufti’s family history, which he can trace back fourteen hundred years to the inner circle of the prophet Muhammad, offers an enlightened perspective on the mystifying history of Pakistan. Mufti uses the stories of his ancestors, many of whom served as judges and jurists in Muslim sharia courts of South Asia for many centuries, to reveal the deepest roots—real and imagined—of Islamic civilization in Pakistan. More than a personal history, The Faithful Scribe captures the larger story of the world’s first Islamic democracy, and explains how the state that once promised to bridge Islam and the West is now threatening to crumble under historical and political pressure, and why Pakistan’s destiny matters to us all.
Download or read book The Reluctant Fundamentalist written by Mohsin Hamid and published by Anchor Canada. This book was released on 2009-06-05 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the award-winning Moth Smoke comes a perspective on love, prejudice, and the war on terror that has never been seen in North American literature. At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world. “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.” —from The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Download or read book Writing Pakistan written by Mushtaq Bilal and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2016-08-10 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be an English-language fiction writer in a country that is perpetually on the brink of disaster? In this first-ever collection of interviews with Pakistani novelists writing in English, Mushtaq Bilal explores how fictions are informed by the authors' cultural identities. Is it possible, for instance, to write about Pakistan without self-censoring? How do writers contest and challenge Western stereotypes of the country? Do they even consciously do that? And what about challenging Pakistani stereotypes of the West?Providing fresh insights into some of the most important and politically engaged contemporary fiction to come out of the subcontinent, Writing Pakistan is essential reading for anyone interested in the art of storytelling, in books and in Pakistan itself - because to understand a nation, one needs to talk to those who are writing it.
Download or read book Modern Poetry of Pakistan written by Iftikhar Arif and published by Deep Vellum Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern Poetry of Pakistan brings together not one but many poetic traditions indigenous to Pakistan, with 142 poems translated from seven major languages, six of them regional (Baluchi, Kashmiri, Panjabi, Pashto, Seraiki, and Sindhi) and one national (Urdu). Collecting the work of forty-two poets and fifteen translators, this book reveals a society riven by ethnic, class, and political differences—but also a beautiful and truly national literature, with work both classical and modern, belonging to the same culture and sharing many of the same concerns and perceptions.
Download or read book Testing Creative Writing in Pakistan written by Humaira Irfan and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the impact of creative writing tests on classroom practice in Pakistan. All National Education Policies in Pakistan since 1959 have expressed grave concern at the deteriorating standard of Board Examinations but no significant steps have been taken to improve the examination system. The method of assessment in the Pakistani classroom is influenced by the Board Examinations, with the students memorising the essays and stories from their textbooks and reproducing them. The Board Examination tends to produce negative washback as it damages learners creative talents. Appropriate changes in the textbooks and the external examination, however, will, in turn, definitely improve the teaching and assessment practices in the classroom.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing written by Aroosa Kanwal and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction / Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam -- Reimagining History: The Legacy of War and Partition. "All These Angularities": Spatialising non-Muslim Pakistani Identities / Cara Cilano -- 1971: Reassessing a Forgotten National Narrative / Muneeza Shamsie -- History, Borders and Identity: Dealing with Silenced Memories of 1971 / Daniela Vitolo -- 9/11 and Beyond: Contexts, Forms and Perspectives. Global Pakistan in the Wake of 9/11 / Ulka Anjaria -- US-American Inoutside Perspectives and the Dynamics of Post-9/11 Dissociation in Pakistani Fiction / Claudia Nordinger -- The Nuclear Novel in Pakistan / Michaela M. Henry -- Uses of Humour in Post-9/11 Pakistani Anglophone Fiction: H.M Naqvi's Home Boy and Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes / Ambreen Hai -- Comic Affiliations/Comic Subversions: The Use of Humour in Contemporary British Pakistani Fiction / Sarah Ilott -- Resistance and Redefinition: Theatre of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK and the US / Suhaan Mehta -- Historiographic Metafiction and Renarrating History / Nisreen Yousef -- The Dialectics of Human Rights: Politics, Positionality, Controversies. Pakistani Fiction and Human Rights / Esra Mirze Santesso -- Divergent Discourses: Human Rights, and Contemporary Pakistani Anglophone Literature / Shazia Sadaf -- The Taming of the Tribal within Pakistani Narratives of Progress, Conflict and Romance / Uzma Abid Ansari -- Phoenix Rising: The West's Use (and misuse) of Anglophone Memoirs of Pakistani Women / Colleen Lutz Clemens -- Writing Back and/as Activism: Refiguring Victimhood and Remapping the Shooting of Malala Yousafzai / Rachel Fox -- Identities in Question: Shifting Perspectives on Gender. Doing History Right: Challenging Masculinist Postcolonialism in Pakistani English Literature / Fawzia Afzal-Khan -- Love, Sex, and Desire v/s Islam in British Muslim Literature / Kavita Bhanot -- Everyday Life and Wordly Subjectivity in Pakistani Anglophone Fiction / Mosarrap Hossain Khan -- Spaces of Female Subjectivity: Identity, Difference, Agency. Agency, Gender, Nationalism and the Romantic Imaginary in Pakistan / Abu-Bakar Ali -- Conjugal Homes: Marriage Culture in Contemporary Novels of the Pakistani Diaspora / Rahul K. Gairola and Elham Fatma -- British-Pakistani Female Playwrights: Feminist Perspectives on Sexuality, Marriage, and Domestic Violence / Aqeel Abdulla -- Shifting Contexts: New Perspectives on Identity, Space and Mobility. Identifying Islamic Spaces of Worship in Contemporary British Pakistani Life Writing / Gerogia Stabler -- Homes and Belonging(s): The Interconnectedness of Space, Movement and Identity in British Pakistani Novels / Eva Pataki -- Committed and Communist: Negotiating Political Alegiances in the Diaspora / Miquel Pomar-Amer -- Unsettling Narratives: Imagining Post-postcolonial Perspectives. Non-Human Narrative Agency: Textual Sedimentation in Pakistani Anglophone Literature / Asma Mansoor -- Post-Postcolonial Experiments with Perspectives / Hanji Lee -- Peripheral Modernism and Realism in British-Pakistani Fiction / Asher Ghaffar -- New Horizons: Towards a Pakistani Idiom. "Brand Pakistan": Global Imaginings and National Concerns in Pakistani Anglophone Literature / Barirah Nazir, Nicholas Holm and Kim L. Worthington -- Competing Habitus: National Expectations, Metropolitan Market and Pakistani Writing in English (PWE) / Masood Raja -- De/Re-constructing Identities: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Pakistani Fiction / Faisal Nazir -- On the Wings of Poesy: Pakistani Diaspora Poets and the Pakistani Idiom / Waseem Anwar -- Brand Pakistan: The Case of Pakistani Anglophone Literary Canon / Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam
Download or read book A case of Exploding Mangoes written by Mohammed Hanif and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In August 1988, Zia gets into the presidential plane, Pak One, which explodes midway. Who killed him? The army generals growing old waiting for their promotions, the CIA, the ISI, RAW, or Ali Shigri, a junior officer at the military academy whose father, a whisky-swilling jihadi colonel, was murdered by the army? A Case of Exploding Mangoes is sharp, black, inventive, and utterly gripping. It marks the debut of a brilliant new writer.
Download or read book Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing written by Aroosa Kanwal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 779 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing forms a theoretical, comprehensive, and critically astute overview of the history and future of Pakistani literature in English. Dealing with key issues for global society today, from terrorism, religious extremism, fundamentalism, corruption, and intolerance, to matters of love, hate, loss, belongingness, and identity conflicts, this Companion brings together over thirty essays by leading and emerging scholars, and presents: the transformations and continuities in Pakistani anglophone writing since its inauguration in 1947 to today; contestations and controversies that have not only informed creative writing but also subverted certain stereotypes in favour of a dynamic representation of Pakistani Muslim experiences; a case for a Pakistani canon through a critical perspective on how different writers and their works have, at different times, both consciously and unconsciously, helped to realise and extend a uniquely Pakistani idiom. Providing a comprehensive yet manageable introduction to cross-cultural relations and to historical, regional, local, and global contexts that are essential to reading Pakistani anglophone literature, The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing is key reading for researchers and academics in Pakistani anglophone literature, history, and culture. It is also relevant to other disciplines such as terror studies, post-9/11 literature, gender studies, postcolonial studies, feminist studies, human rights, diaspora studies, space and mobility studies, religion, and contemporary South Asian literatures and cultures.
Download or read book Pakistan Under Siege written by Madiha Afzal and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.
Download or read book Granta 112 written by John Freeman and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2011-05-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with almost 200 million people speaking nearly sixty languages, brought into nationhood under the auspices of a single religion, but wracked with deep separatist fissures and the destabilizing forces of ongoing conflicts in Iran, Afghanistan and Kashmir, Pakistan is one of the most dynamic places in the world today. From the writers who are living outside the country - Kamila Shamsie and Nadeem Aslam - to those going back - Mohsin Hamid and Mohammed Hanif - to those who are living there and writing in Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluchi and English, there is a startling opportunity to draw together an exciting collection of voices at the forefront of a literary renaissance. Other contributors include Fatima Bhutto and Basharat Peer. Granta 112: Pakistan will seize this moment, bringing to life the landscape and culture of the country in fiction, reportage, memoir, travelogue and poetry. Like the magazine's issues on India and Australia, its release will be a watershed moment critically and a chance to celebrate the corona of talent which has burst onto the English language publishing world in recent years.
Download or read book Unmarriageable written by Soniah Kamal and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This inventive retelling of Pride and Prejudice charms.”—People “A fun, page-turning romp and a thought-provoking look at the class-obsessed strata of Pakistani society.”—NPR Alys Binat has sworn never to marry—until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor concerning the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won’t make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and have children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire the girls to dream of more. When an invitation arrives to the biggest wedding their small town has seen in years, Mrs. Binat, certain that their luck is about to change, excitedly sets to work preparing her daughters to fish for rich, eligible bachelors. On the first night of the festivities, Alys’s lovely older sister, Jena, catches the eye of Fahad “Bungles” Bingla, the wildly successful—and single—entrepreneur. But Bungles’s friend Valentine Darsee is clearly unimpressed by the Binat family. Alys accidentally overhears his unflattering assessment of her and quickly dismisses him and his snobbish ways. As the days of lavish wedding parties unfold, the Binats wait breathlessly to see if Jena will land a proposal—and Alys begins to realize that Darsee’s brusque manner may be hiding a very different man from the one she saw at first glance. Told with wry wit and colorful prose, Unmarriageable is a charming update on Jane Austen’s beloved novel and an exhilarating exploration of love, marriage, class, and sisterhood. Praise for Unmarriageable “Delightful . . . Unmarriageable introduces readers to a rich Muslim culture. . . . [Kamal] observes family dramas with a satiric eye and treats readers to sparkling descriptions of a days-long wedding ceremony, with its high-fashion pageantry and higher social stakes.”—Star Tribune “Thoroughly charming.”—New York Post “[A] funny, sometimes romantic, often thought-provoking glimpse into Pakistani culture, one which adroitly illustrates the double standards women face when navigating sex, love, and marriage. This is a must-read for devout Austenites.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book Contemporary Pakistani Speculative Fiction and the Global Imaginary written by Shazia Sadaf and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-26 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the first book-length study of emergent Pakistani speculative fiction written in English, this critical work explores the ways in which contemporary Pakistani authors extend the genre in new directions by challenging the cognitive majoritarianism (usually Western) in this field. Responding to the recent Afro science fiction movement that has spurred non-Western writers to seek a democratization of the broader genre of speculative fiction, Pakistani writers have incorporated elements from djinn mythology, Qur'anic eschatology, "Desi" (South Asian) traditions, local folklore, and Islamic feminisms in their narratives to encourage familiarity with alternative world views. In five chapters, this book analyzes fiction by several established Pakistani authors as well as emerging writers to highlight the literary value of these contemporary works in reconciling competing cognitive approaches, blurring the dividing line between "possibilities" and "impossibilities" in envisioning humanity’s collective future, and anticipating the future of human rights in these envisioned worlds.
Download or read book Transcultural Humanities in South Asia written by Waseem Anwar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume looks at the implications of transcultural humanities in South Asia, which is becoming a crucial area of research within literary and cultural studies. The volume also explores various complex critical dimensions of transculturation, its indeterminate periodisation, its temporal and spatial nonlinearity, its territoriality and intersectionality. Drawing on contributors from around the globe, the entries look at literature and poetics, theory and praxis, borders and nations, politics, Partition, gender and sexuality, the environment, representations in art and pedagogy and the transcultural classroom. Using key examples and case studies, the contributors look at current developments in transcultural and transnational standpoints and their possible educational outcomes. A broad and comprehensive collection, as it also speaks about the value of the humanities and the significance of South Asian contexts, Transcultural Humanities in South Asia will be of particular interest to those working on postcolonial studies, literary studies, Asian studies and more.
Download or read book New Soundings in Postcolonial Writing written by Janet Wilson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-29 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Soundings in Postcolonial Writing is a collection of critical and creative writing in honour of the postcolonial critic, editor and anthologist Bruce King. There are essays on topics relating to Caribbean authors (Derek Walcott, Simone and Andre Schwarz-Bart); diaspora writers in England (Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy, Michael Ondaatje), South East Asian writing in English (Arun Kolatkar, recent Pakistani fiction, Anita Desai) and New Zealand, Canadian and Pacific writers (Albert Wendt, Patricia Grace, Bill Manhire, Joseph Boyden, Greg O’Brien). The creative writing section features new work by David Dabydeen, Fred D’Aguiar, Arvind Mehrotra, Jeet Thayil, Meena Alexander, Keki Daruwalla, Adil Jussawalla, Tabish Khair, Susan Visvanathan and others, reflecting King’s pioneering work on Indian poetry in English, and his many friendships.
