The South Asia Speaks (SAS) literary fellowship, which was previously restricted to applicants resident in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, has now opened its doors to young South Asian voices around the world. Afghan applicants were permitted to apply even if they weren’t living in Afghanistan.

SAS pairs a handful of promising young writers and poets with seasoned literary professionals and journalists to develop a book-length project. Successful applicants are provided one-on-one sessions with an assigned mentor, as well as a range of craft workshops and masterclasses to hone their skills.

Masterclasses and workshops have been conducted by Shamsie, Pankaj Mishra, Vauhini Vara and Taymour Soomro for past cohorts.

Applications for the 2026 cohort will open September 1 and run till Sep 30.

SAS has paired over 100 fellows with mentors over the last five years. Their fellows have gone on to publish books with prestigious publishing houses such as Penguin Random House, Bloomsbury and HarperCollins. The 2025 cohort had eight fellows, one from Pakistan, six from India and one from India-occupied Kashmir.

While the fellowship initially catered to fiction and non-fiction writers, last year saw the introduction of an oral history mentorship programme, helmed by seasoned oral historian Aanchal Malhotra.

Malhotra has won awards for her writings on the lived experiences of Partition and is a co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory — a digital repository tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectables and antiques.

The SAS fellowship was founded by Sonia Faleiro, who continues to serve as programme director. She is joined on the board by Fatima Bhutto, Isaac Chotiner and Julia Churchill.

Now imagine if someone just fed the book to AI and called it a day. That’s exactly what Urdu novelist Umera Ahmed’s team is worried about.

In an Instagram post on the writer’s official page, they thanked readers for the “tremendous love and support” they had shown her novels over the years and said they had noticed “a lot of AI-generated images, videos and reels trying to depict scenes, characters and dialogues from the novels”.

“We kindly ask all content creators and pages not to generate or share any AI visuals of Umera Ahmed’s work,” the post said.

The team said literature cultivated a very personal experience for those who enjoyed it and AI content deprived readers of that “personal connection”. They also said some of Ahmed’s works — like the novel Peer-e-Kamil — were so “deep, sensitive and spiritual” that no one should dilute their “beauty and sanctity” with AI.

The team said while they valued the creativity and energy that goes into running the many fan pages that post about the writer’s books, “it would be a great shame if people started diluting the beautiful words of Umera Ahmed”.

They asked content creators and pages to let the magic of Ahmed’s words touch them and others “the way it is meant to”.

AI has become a talking point in Pakistan recently after a number of incidents highlighted its negative impacts on the entertainment industry.

On Monday, Minister of Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal shared a music video produced by his ministry with extensive use of AI. It was criticised heavily for trying — and frankly, failing — to replace human artists.

Last month, TV personalities Tauseeq Haider and Farah Saadia were given quite the shock when they found out AI-generated pictures of their supposed wedding had gone viral. They both later clarified in a video that they were, in fact, “happily single”.

Actor Hira Tareen also cautioned against contracts being given to actors which could have their sign away their likeness for studios to make AI content with. She advised her colleagues to always read the fine print before signing anything.

Her short stories have been featured in American Literary Review, The Punch Magazine and Salamander, as well as in In the New Century: An Anthology of Pakistani Literature. The last one was edited by Muneeza Shamsi and published by Oxford University Press, Pakistan.

What Remains After a Fire is a collection of eight of Javed’s stories. The book gives the reader a taste of the author’s prowess. Javed writes with clarity. She knows what she wants to convey and she weaves the tale to project exactly that. Her stories have an agenda, but that does not mean they are dull or sermonise.

The running thread found across the eight offerings in What Remains After a Fire concerns subjects familiar to Pakistani readers. They encompass patriarchy, the low position of women in society and the fact that it is generally accepted, hypocrisy — especially in overtly religious settings — and marital problems. Javed contends that these issues plague every stratum of society. The rich are not exempted.

The stories are not peopled with happy characters. They have angst, discontentment and a yearning for a better or, at least, a different life. Javed deals with such human emotions with a light touch and deep understanding. She makes her characters’ feelings seem relevant and justified.

A collection of eight compelling short stories examines the quiet devastations of women’s lives, family relationships and social prejudice with empathy and remarkable narrative control

Two stories, ‘Rani’ and ‘The Last Days of Bilqees Begum’, have a great affinity. They are both about women who are facing imminent death. They are cared for by women as well, females who are in that position not by choice but by circumstance. Even though the dying women are not fully lucid, an act of betrayal from their past keeps impinging on their memories, because the perpetrator is someone they loved and trusted. When the wound to the psyche is sufficiently dire, it can never be forgotten.

There are many similarities in the tales titled ‘Stray Things Do Not Carry a Soul’ and ‘Ruby’. They are both about families who are abjectly poor. The narrator in each story is an adolescent who is also a helpless victim. ‘Ruby’ addresses the treatment of minorities in Pakistan as well as the stark contrast between the rich and the poor. On the one hand, there is over-abundance and plenty of waste and, on the other, penury and hopelessness. Yet, the women in both situations are equally dissatisfied.

‘Stray Things Do Not Carry a Soul’ depicts a father who cannot control his demons and is thus unable to set a good example for his son. The young lad hero-worships his father but finally spots his feet of clay. The narrative ends with a whisper of hope, unlike ‘Ruby’.

Three stories which are set in the USA target disparate topics. ‘It Will Follow You Home’, one of the shorter offerings in the book, touches upon mental health issues. It points out that if a therapist and patient are from dissimilar cultures, treatment may not be effective. The heroine struggles with loneliness and death and concludes that the challenges confronting her are fundamentally different from those that immigrant men face.

Like the previous story, ‘My Bones Hold a Stillness’ is also set in an American university. The wanton killing of a young Pakistani student brings out the hidden mental traumas of two friends, one a Pakistani and the other an American. The tale shows that no place is safe and that bad things can happen to anyone at any time. The guilt, the grief and the final release from fear are beautifully limned. This story also deals with paedophilia and the cycle of denial it often sets off in Pakistani homes.

Personality is truly destiny in ‘Worry Doll’, the third story set in the USA. Two women are in analogous situations, yet their responses differ. Are their reactions so diverse only because one is more rooted in tradition? And could the other one be happy elsewhere, or is her restlessness a part of her make-up? These are dilemmas that Javed chooses to probe in this tale.

‘Carry it All’, a very short story, portrays the lot of women in Pakistani society as perceived by the author. Happiness is considered an elusive goal for women. Marriages are fraught with misery and women are blamed for things beyond their control — even among the educated. The ending of this story is ambiguous and borders on the supernatural.

Death, suicide and the sad lot of women are recurring tropes. Even obedient and self-sacrificing wives suffer and females who are divorced or childless are especially punished. Men, on the other hand, are characterised as excessively macho, two-faced, unfeeling and even evil. The reader may not agree with all that the author has to say. However, her writing style cannot be faulted.

Javed is at ease with words. Language soars like a symphony in her hands. She uses ordinary vocabulary to extraordinary effect. In one place, a recently widowed woman “…emerged like an Amaltas tree in full bloom.” Relationships are described as “…paper thin, easily ripped and discarded.”

What Remains After a Fire is easy to read yet impactful. Each story is constructed so that its layers peel away like an onion to get to its heart. The reader gets totally engrossed in the coils of Javed’s imagination. It is Pakistan’s good fortune that another talented young voice has been raised to cement its position on the global literary stage.

We will rely on Kanza Javed to relay our stories to the world. She has done so remarkably well already and her art can only improve in the years to come.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 26th, 2026

Contrary to popular belief, the Gothic is an incredibly difficult genre of writing to master. While a respected tradition of Gothic writers, ranging from Ann Radcliffe to Isak Dinesen, have produced texts that are genuinely entertaining mixtures of horror and romance (the two major linchpins of the genre), plenty of charlatans (both in the Subcontinent as well as overseas) have attempted to create Gothic pieces, with results that are laughable at best and ghastly at worst. Ava Reid succeeds in creating a mixture of grotesque horror and surprisingly plausible romance.

The heroine, Agnes, hails from a period in a fantastical universe where necromancy, though formerly rampant, has been severely suppressed by the efforts of a conqueror named Berengar. Agnes belongs to one of seven major houses, all named after parts of the body — the House of Teeth, the House of Blood, the House of Eyes etc. One does not need to look very closely in order to perceive the parallels between Agnes’ grim world and that of Westeros in Game of Thrones. However, the psychosis and gore underlying Reid’s universe give even the hit show a run for its money!

The author pulls out all the stops in Innamorata when it comes to underscoring the most evil of human instincts — lust, gluttony, cruelty, sadism and violence, to name just a few. While her writing is elegant and clear, Reid makes an undeniable impact on her readers by means of her vocabulary and nomenclature — medics, for example, are called ‘leeches’ in the book. The writing is visually striking throughout, and uncompromisingly graphic at times. The love scenes are sensual without being obscene. However, the violent episodes are very disturbing, and more sensitive readers may benefit from perusing trigger warnings prior to engaging with the novel.

A richly imagined gothic fantasy novel blends necromancy, court intrigue, forbidden love and visceral violence into an unsettling tale

When the reader first encounters Agnes, one finds that the heroine is mute, although that is by choice rather than because of a speech defect. She is portrayed as being especially close to her cousin Marozia. On the passing of their grandmother Adele-Blanche (whose remains, per custom, are brutally desecrated in order to prevent her being resurrected by means of necromancy), Marozia becomes the head of the matriarchal House of Teeth.

She is wed to Prince Liuprand, the son of King Nicephorus. Liuprand’s father, a thoroughly detestable character who delights in the pain and misery of others, rules over all the seven kingdoms in the city of Drepane. The name of Nicephorus’s late wife, Philomel, conjures up images of the ravaged wife of King Tereus in Greek mythology, who was left mute and mutilated by her fiend-like husband.

We are told that Liuprand’s mother was driven to insanity by Nicephorus’s machinations. While Liuprand is a much kinder and far more ethical individual than his cruel progenitor, his marriage to Marozia is doomed from the outset. Agnes and the prince fall hopelessly in love with each other. Although, unlike the mythological Queen Philomel, Agnes eventually regains her ability to speak, it is only after undergoing great trauma — first at the hands of Nicephorus, and later due to other despicable individuals in the tale.

Marozia is no fool and catches on to the fact that her husband has little to no interest in her romantically or sexually. The book repeatedly underscores that the very highest echelons of power mandate that royalty and nobility marry for considerations other than love or passion. Agnes herself is married off to the ruler of another of the noble houses, but her marriage, too, is doomed from the very outset.

Moreover, unlike Marozia and Liuprand’s union, it is short-lived, since her spouse is murdered on their wedding night by an insanely jealous member of his family. Despite Liuprand and Agnes sharing several gentle, sensitive and beautiful moments, these simply serve as fleeting glimmers in what is a very dark and bleak novelistic landscape. Reid does an especially fine job of enabling the reader to access Agnes’s thoughts, a point that is especially important given that she is silent for about a third of the novel.

Despite being over 500 pages, the book is a fast-paced and engaging read. While there are many ugly scenes, including torture and bloody brawls, there is never a dull moment in the novel per se. The chapters are short, ranging from about three to 10 pages each, and Reid’s pace never flags as she leads the action towards a breathless cliff-hanger.

The reason for this ending is that Innamorata is the first part of a duology and, while I will not spoil the reader’s experience by spelling out what happens to the unfortunate Agnes, those readers who appreciate that the violence of the first book is not gratuitous will be left hungering for more.

What is most disturbing to me about the plot of the book is not that Agnes simply suffers trauma due to the actions of depraved strangers. Her own grandmother, Adele-Blanche, who was a very powerful and formidable queen in her own right, subjected Agnes to intense trauma, in order to train her in the dark arts of sorcery and necromancy. But unlike the old queen, Agnes is a fundamentally decent and gentle young woman who chooses the path of love over and above that of power and self-aggrandisement.

Therein, however, lies Agnes’s tragedy. Her love for Liuprand, while fully reciprocated, cannot shield either character from the strictures and demands of royal life, which tend to twist, distort and often destroy those who come between those who are power-hungry and their nefarious goals.

Be that as it may, Reid is to be commended for being able to describe the vicious and the virtuous with an equal degree of skill. Some of her other (more minor) characters, such as a nonagenarian wet-nurse named Waltrude and a wise leech named Pliny, act as rare, calm voices of sense in an otherwise chaotic and cacophonous world. Only those with no capacity for empathy would refrain from sympathising with Lady Agnes’ predicaments.

However, let us hope that the second book will enable one to see whether she manages to triumph against all odds. I’ll settle for a pyrrhic victory for Agnes, if nothing else, simply because I am aware that hardcore Gothic novels tend to add layer upon layer of terror and despair — rather like Pandora’s box in Greek mythology.

Nevertheless, the spirit of hope did emerge from the box once all its evils escaped into the world. Let us hope, therefore, that Reid has a couple of optimistic tricks in mind when it comes to the sequel to Innamorata.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 2nd, 2026

I come from Pasni, a coastal city in Balochistan where life is inseparable from the sea. From my own family to nearly every household around us, livelihoods depend upon fishing. The sea is therefore more than a landscape: it is a source of sustenance, hope and, at times, devastation.

I had not begun reading Nazuk with the intention of reviewing it. But the memories stirred by its dedication — and later by its portrayal of the sea were too powerful to ignore. The novel understands what the sea means to a fisherman: when calm, it offers relief and livelihood; when violent, it can sweep everything away.

I remember returning home from school one day, my bag still perched on my shoulders, and finding an unusual number of vehicles outside our house. Confused, I stepped through the door and saw a crowd of both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Panic rose within me as I searched for my mother. I threw down my schoolbag and found her sitting with her head in her hands, grieving and cursing a fish — the Indian mackerel, known in Balochi as seem and bangda.

I bent down beside her. My cousins were crying. Then I noticed my aunt sitting silently, her head lowered beneath a large chadar. My mother told me that her cousin, who was also my Amma’s brother-in-law, had gone to sea to fish for the seasonal bangda. All the fishermen aboard were lost, except for one man who knew how to swim and was later rescued by a larger fishing launch.

From that day onward, bangda was never cooked in our home again, and my aunt and her two daughters never returned to the sea. Her sons eventually did. They became fishermen because, despite all they suffered, the sea remained their only livelihood.

That is the cruel paradox of coastal life: the sea that takes away a fisherman may still be the sea to which his offspring must return.

Published in 1976, Nazuk is widely regarded as the first novel in the Balochi language. Its author, Sayad Zahoor Shah Hashumi (1926–1978), was a major figure in modern Balochi literature. Nearly five decades later, the novel has reached a wider readership through Fazal Baloch’s English translation. A writer, translator and academic, Baloch primarily translates Balochi literature into English. His translation of Nazuk was featured as part of the Himal Fiction Fest 2026, bringing this foundational work to readers beyond the Balochi-speaking world.

The novel appears to be set along the Makran coast, with much of its action unfolding beside — and in — the sea. At its centre is Nazuk, who is married at the age of 15 and by 28 has been widowed thrice. Each of her husbands is a fisherman; each goes out to sea and never returns. When her third husband dies, she is labeled a ‘husband killer’. When she agrees to marry again, she sets a condition: her future husband must not go to sea. Her life is therefore shaped by the repeated cycle of departure, societal stigma and loss that defines many coastal households.

Although Nazuk remains the novel’s central figure, Hashumi ensures that the surrounding characters are never reduced to mere background. Each is given enough space to breathe, speak and contribute to the social world of the narrative. Divided into 19 brief sections, the novel gradually reveals different realities of Baloch society: domestic tensions, local gossip, economic hardship, communal bonds and the quiet endurance of women.

The familiar claim that literature mirrors society feels especially appropriate here. Reading Nazuk as a Baloch reader, I felt as though Hashumi had moved from house to house, listened carefully to conversations ordinarily dismissed as gossip, and carried those voices onto the page. The novel is brief and outwardly simple. It offers neither the machinery of a mystery nor the suspense of a thriller. Its power lies elsewhere: in its ability to make everyday life feel immediate, as though a lived reality were unfolding before the reader’s eyes.

Throughout the novel, Hashumi places two sharply contrasting figures alongside one another: Nazuk, a woman defined by dignity, endurance and resilience, and Gazabek, the town’s powerful master, whose authority is marked by corruption, cunning and sexual predation. Nazuk survives repeated incidents of personal loss without compromising her moral strength, while Gazabek exploits his social position to manipulate those around him.

Their parallel presence creates the novel’s central ethical contrast: one character possesses little power but great integrity; the other commands influence yet remains morally impoverished. Through them, Hashumi exposes the distance between social authority and genuine human worth.

Much of Nazuk unfolds through dialogue and conversations. Rather than interrupting the narrative with explicit social commentary, Hashumi allows the prejudices of the community to reveal themselves through the language its characters use. 

This becomes apparent as early as chapter two, when Nazuk and her first husband, Meeran, are introduced. One night, Meeran’s crew arrives to take him fishing despite the violent wind. The men suggest postponing the journey, but Meeran, the boat’s captain, dismisses their caution by declaring that their hearts are “as weak as a woman’s”. He sails out, and neither he nor his boat return. 

The following chapter widens this criticism. As families gather by the shore, anxiously waiting for their loved ones’ boats to return, a man from Gazabek’s household appears to be scanning the sea through a telescope. The crowd assumes he is searching for the missing fishermen when, in fact, his gaze is fixed on the women whose clothes have been pressed against their bodies by the strong wind. The scene exposes how easily women are reduced to objects of observation, even at a moment when they are themselves confronting grief and uncertainty.

The same chapter turns gossip into an anatomy of patriarchal honour. One man claims that Gazabek fears his wife because she knows enough about his misconduct to expose him. Another replies, “A man who fears his wife has no dignity left.” Through such exchanges, the novel reveals the contradictions of this moral order: a man’s corruption may be tolerated, yet his wife’s knowledge of it threatens his dignity; honour is presented as a family possession, but its burden is placed overwhelmingly upon women.

The pattern repeats in chapter 11, when Nazuk urges her second husband, Jami, to listen to his crew and avoid sailing in dangerous weather. He replies, “You’re a woman, so I don’t blame you for saying that.” Like Meeran, he mistakes caution for feminine weakness, leaves for the sea and never returns. Elsewhere, a grieving man is mocked for “crying like a woman”. Ordinary human responses to danger and loss are repeatedly degraded through their association with women.

Chapter nine extends this critique through the story of Gulok, a woman divorced merely for attending a friend’s wedding without her husband’s permission. As the women discuss her fate, one remarks that “men are always suspicious of women”, while another observes that, with time, a woman learns that “whether she is innocent or guilty, she will be blamed”. Their conversation reveals a social order in which accusation itself becomes a form of control: a woman’s conduct is judged not by evidence, but by the suspicions projected onto her.

The dialogue becomes even more revealing when the women explain that a husband may begin to regard his wife as modest and virtuous simply because she has stopped questioning him or answering back. Yet the conversation also exposes how the patriarchy is sustained through denial. Rather than holding the husband accountable, someone insists that “he is not like this” and that another person must have “poisoned his ears”. His cruelty is treated as an external influence, while the woman is left to bear its consequences. Through Gulok’s story, Hashumi shows how women are not only judged by men’s suspicions but are gradually trained to silence themselves in order to survive them.

Yet Hashumi does not present women solely as victims of a patriarchal order. Alongside their vulnerability, he emphasises their resilience, labour and economic importance. From the opening chapters, women are shown selling food along the shore, participating directly in the informal economy that sustains coastal life. Their work may appear modest, but it forms an essential part of the community’s survival.

Nazuk becomes the strongest embodiment of this independence. Widowed and responsible for three children, she not only resists Gazabek’s sexual advances but also acquires a fishing boat of her own. The boat supports more than her immediate household: the fishermen who work on it and their families also depend upon the income it generates. Nazuk’s economic agency therefore extends beyond self-preservation and becomes a source of collective livelihood.

The novel similarly portrays marriage as a form of shared economic labour rather than a relationship sustained by men alone. Jami’s father is an experienced fisherman, yet Jami’s mother supplements the family income by selling fried kingfish. Similarly, when Nazuk is first married, her father gives her a boat, which Meeran later takes out to sea. 

When she subsequently marries Jami, who possesses little of his own, Nazuk sells her gold so that he can acquire a boat. These details quietly overturn the conventional image of the man as the sole provider. In Nazuk, women repeatedly finance, support and stabilise the very households in which their authority is often denied. 

This resilience, however, exists beside a darker reality. Not every woman is able to escape Gazabek’s power. A young woman is manipulated, becomes pregnant and is then married off to one of his associates, allowing him to conceal the consequences of his abuse. Other women are exploited through financial dependency: Gazabek assists them or their husbands, only to demand sexual access in return. 

Through this contrast, Hashumi shows that economic vulnerability and sexual exploitation are closely connected. Women’s labour sustains the community, yet the structures of power surrounding them frequently deny them security, dignity and protection. Nazuk’s independence is therefore not merely a personal achievement. It is also a form of resistance against a social order that allows men such as Gazabek to turn wealth and influence into instruments of coercion.

At certain points, however, the author’s hostility towards Gazabek becomes very explicit, such as when Nazuk’s cousin Omar brings her complaint before Gazabek, he summons her and listens to the case while “fidgeting with his fingers, at times licking his lips or blinking rapidly like a bitch”. This description reduces him to a restless, almost animal-like figure, making his predatory intentions visible yet the comparison is also troubling. By using “bitch” as a term of degradation, the narration relies upon the same gendered vocabulary that the novel appears to criticise elsewhere. 

The novel’s concerns also extend to corruption and misrule. The Vali’s sycophants engage, with his approval, in smuggling and other illicit practices that inflate prices and create shortages, pushing fishing families towards hunger. They also seek out women for his private pleasure. Justice fares no better: the qazi demands bribes for favourable verdicts, protecting those who can pay and condemning the poor. Political and judicial authority thus reinforce, rather than restrain, exploitation.

Ultimately, Nazuk derives its power from recognition. Through the sea, Hashumi captures the precarity and endurance of coastal life; through Nazuk and Gazabek, he sets dignity against corrupt authority; and through everyday conversation, he reveals how injustice becomes embedded in ordinary life. Decades after its publication, the novel remains unsettling because many of the realities it records still endure.

By the mid-1950s, the young man from Peshawar had done everything expected of him. He had studied at Lawrence College in Murree before gaining admission to Aligarh Muslim University, followed by stints at Columbia and then Harvard, training not as an artist but as an engineer. Gulgee’s future appeared settled, respectable, even enviable. But if he had followed that course to its end, odds are he may not have found himself being written about in these pages.

Somewhere along the way, engineering had lost its lustre for him. He wanted to paint. But what now may seem like the inevitable path for him to chart — after all, as demonstrated by his corpus, how could this man be anything other than an artist? — was a decision fraught with tangible jeopardy at the time.

Upon hearing this confession about dreams of artistic grandeur, Gulgee’s father, Sher Ali Ismaili, was unconvinced. Before abandoning a profession for which his son had travelled halfway across the world to qualify, Ismaili instructed Gulgee to first seek the advice of Sultan Muhammad Shah, Aga Khan III. An appointment was arranged and a ticket booked for Cannes, where Gulgee explained to the religious leader that he wished to become an artist.

The Aga Khan’s response was measured rather than romantic and entirely befitting of a man who had played no small part in the fight for the creation of Pakistan: “Look, Gulgee, your country needs people like you — qualified, trained people. First, you give a few years — say five — to your country and, when you finish that, you can do what you like.” Gulgee obeyed.

A recently published coffee table book pieces together the remarkable life of the legendary late artist Gulgee through tales recounted by family and friends, critical essays and archival images, revealing a man every bit as fascinating as his art.

He returned to Pakistan and worked as a dutiful engineer on the design of the Warsak Dam in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. When the five years were over and his promise fulfilled, Gulgee resigned, declaring, “I will polish shoes, but I won’t do engineering. I will paint.” Hence, before the portraits of kings and presidents, before the explosive abstractions and luminous lapis lazuli mosaics, there was simply a young man at a crossroads trying to negotiate duty, expectation, vocation and ambition.

In many ways, it is precisely this sort of story that makes Gulgee Museum: The Handbook such a richly rewarding publication. Edited by John McCarry and developed alongside the opening of the Gulgee Museum by Gulgee’s son Amin Gulgee, the volume brings together essays by writers, critics, artists and family members alike.

But, having inevitably breathed in Gulgee’s art all throughout my life, in one form or another, I was far more interested in what personal insights this book had to offer into Gulgee the man. And I’m happy to report that it is Gulgee the man — his upbringing, humour, friendships, obsessions, discipline and contradictions — who emerges as the book’s most compelling creation.

As recounted by his brother Noorali in the book, Gulgee’s birth name was Abdul Mohammad Ismaili. “Gulgee” was simply an affectionate name given to boys in Peshawar, meaning flower. In fact, even the surname ‘Ismaili’ carries its own story. Gulgee’s father had abandoned the family surname ‘Rajput’ after Aga Khan III bestowed upon him the surname Ismaili.

In many ways, the book is at its strongest whenever those who knew Gulgee speak with candour about their memories of him. The artist Wahab Jaffer, who passed away just a few weeks ago, recalls first meeting Gulgee in 1972 through artist and gallery-owner Ali Imam, a stalwart of Karachi’s early art scene. Gulgee quickly became mentor, guide and, in Jaffer’s words, a “father figure.” But it is his description of watching Gulgee paint that lingers longest: “He was an action painter. He would run to the canvas and hit it with a broad brush… He would jump around, breathing heavily. It was quite the theatre for me.”

Years later, Amin remembers witnessing the same spectacle, only from the perspective of a son. Growing up, he writes, meant living with “the intense smell of turpentine and oil paints.” His father would indulgently prepare a canvas for him before becoming utterly absorbed in his own work. “I would witness his trance-like state as he danced in front of his surface.”

The book also reminds readers that genius is rarely a solitary enterprise. One of its most affecting essays belongs to the South Asian art historian Savita Apte, who restores Gulgee’s wife Zarine (Zaro) Gulgee to the story. While Gulgee immersed himself in the act of creation, she writes, it was Zaro who promoted his work, cultivated collectors, networked buyers and pursued payments whenever necessary. The artist’s extraordinary career rested upon an equally extraordinary partnership.

Elsewhere, the solemnity surrounding great artists is dismantled. The writer Nazeen Sheikh remembers Gulgee not only as an innovator but as “a madcap brimming with frolic and a great dance partner.” It is a wonderfully human detail.

Artist and art critic Quddus Mirza offers one of the book’s most persuasive reassessments, arguing that Gulgee approached abstraction “not with a Western eye, but through a mind that deciphered its context, impact and multiplicity in the art of Islam.” Mirza also credits Gulgee with freeing modern Pakistani art from the perception that it belonged only to elite audiences. His paintings, he argues, spoke to ordinary Pakistanis as much as to collectors and critics.

Equally illuminating is the writer Bina Shah’s essay on Gulgee’s portraiture. She traces how Ayub Khan understood portraiture as an instrument of cultural diplomacy, commissioning Gulgee to paint monarchs and presidents from across the world. Gulgee insisted on painting or sketching every portrait from life rather than photographs (the only exception being his portraits of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal). The studies of figures, including the Shah of Iran, Richard Nixon, Rajiv Gandhi, George H.W. Bush and Ayub Khan, reveal both vulnerability and power, transforming official likenesses into remarkably human studies.

Other contributors illuminate the extraordinary range of his artistic practice. We encounter the figurative paintings and sketches of the 1950s and 1960s, the striking yet unfinished portrait of Begum Salimah Aga Khan, the dazzling pietra dura works fashioned from onyx and lapis lazuli, the monumental calligraphic abstractions, before arriving at the haunting Void paintings and the Nuqta series. Rather than presenting these as disconnected phases, the handbook reveals an artist in perpetual motion, forever searching for another visual language.

Nageen Shaikh’s discussion of Gulgee’s fascination with stone is especially memorable. She recounts how he developed his interest in using this material while travelling across Afghanistan during the late-1950s, after being invited there by King Mohammad Zahir Shah to paint portraits of Shah and his family.

Gulgee himself explained the attraction with characteristic simplicity: “Stone has been lying in the bowels of the earth for millions and millions of years and it will not disintegrate or fade. That is why I use stone. It is almost everlasting.” The remark feels less like a comment on materials than on legacy itself.

The images throughout the volume are as eloquent as the essays. Full-page reproductions capture the physical richness of the paintings, while archival photographs construct another biography. We see Gulgee with heads of state and collectors, but we also encounter more intimate moments that remind us this was a life lived beyond museums and galleries.

By the final page of this publication, Gulgee’s paintings had undeniably acquired a new meaning for me because the man who made them had finally stepped out from behind them. In doing so, the handbook reveals a truth that every great artist’s archive ultimately seeks to uncover: that life can be every bit as fascinating as art.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 12th, 2026

Called the Manifesto Library, the physical iteration of her book club Service95 — which she has been running since 2021 — will open at the historic Livraria Lello bookshop in Porto, Portugal today (June 27).

While this initiative is part of a multi-day celebration of the Livraria Lello’s 120th anniversary, the library will remain at the venue as a permanent feature.

In a press release, Lipa was quoted as saying, “When I founded the Service95 Book Club, my ambition was for it to become a home for writers and readers, wherever they are and whatever their circumstances. Reading the world brings us closer — but sadly, not everyone is in favor of that.”

She called the new library a “dream collaboration” and said that the carefully curated 100 books in its collection were works that “that ask questions or have been questioned”. She noted in the statement that many of the authors of these texts had “paid for their words with their life”.

The collection includes works such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Reginald Dwayne Betts’ Felon. Other represented authors include Salman Rushdie and Olga Tokarczuk.

“This library is a shrine to books that have disappeared, to authors whose courage unmasks structures of power and control, and to readers who refuse to be told what book they are allowed to read. You are invited to visit and decide for yourself what belongs on these shelves. Because sometimes the most subversive thing you can do is read a book and then talk about it,” the pop star said.

Books are a big part of Lipa’s life and public image, even outside of her book club. She met her now-husband Callum Turner at a bar and they got talking because they were both reading Hermann Diaz’s Trust. She was also a keynote speaker at the 10th anniversary celebrations of the International Booker Prize this year.

As his recent, brilliant novella, Something Might Fall, indicates, Flusfeder (who is of an Anglo-American background) holds his own against this backdrop, with a grace and sophistication that leaves one marvelling, especially since the novella genre is a slippery and difficult one to cope with.

Released and launched in May 2026, the novella is divided into two main sections. Its time span includes the years 1970 and 1974, and is set in New York, particularly the Upper West Side, where the main female protagonist, Emma Sawyer (her maiden name was Hoffman), resides.

The first segment deals with the inner angst Emma suffers at having to act as the consummate hostess and socialite for her husband, Nicholas Sawyer, an affluent doctor.

A deeply loving and dedicated mother to her six-year-old son, Nicky, Emma feels increasingly trapped by a world where the slightest breach of social etiquette, even if inadvertent or a genuine mistake, can result in resentment and consequences that can all too easily escalate into a social crisis.

An upper-class New York wife and mother in the 1970s finds herself suffocated by the demands of social performance and the loss of her own self in a brilliant new novella

More importantly, we sympathise even further with this “poor little rich girl” because she gave up a career as a writer in order to ensure that her husband’s domestic life runs on lines that are smooth to the point of being quasi-military in their efficiency.

Flusfeder’s major strength as a writer lies in his remarkably astute eye for detail.

Even Emma’s meeting with a friend, Nina Weiss, who is grumpy and peeved at not being invited to one of the Sawyers’ social events, is carefully choreographed. It takes place at a deli and I was impressed by the finely tuned use of language that enables Flusfeder to give clarity to what would otherwise be entirely mundane.

As a customer standing in line before Emma and Nina argues volubly with the man on the other side of the deli counter, reference is made to “lox and tongue” — which ostensibly refers to the meat being ordered — but the tongue-in-cheek joke implied by the author is that everyone (including Emma and Nina, not to mention the reader) hopes the woman will finally see fit to put locks on her tongue and move on. Nina lets go of her grudge and invites Emma to a party she is now deciding to host, but the exchange is socially awkward to the point of being painful.

One sighs as we are introduced to Emma’s life, which has gone from being that of a promising writer to one that consists of carefully calibrated social minutiae, which pile up until the protagonist feels nothing short of stifled.

I do not intend to spoil the novella by revealing the escape route taken by Emma in order to free herself from an essentially hollowed existence. Suffice it to say that even her deep love for her son Nicky, a well-raised and sensitive boy, cannot compensate for her utter exhaustion on both the physical and emotional levels.

Sad though it is, one understands why Emma takes leave of her family in a manner that leaves both Nicholas Senior and Nicholas Junior utterly bewildered.

But while they might be bewildered, the perceptive reader is not. Both Henry James and Edith Wharton were all too aware of how repressive affluent New York society could be. One only has to peruse The Age of Innocence or The Golden Bowl in order to realise that not only is life that glitters not gold, sometimes it is as dangerous as radium, metaphorically causing a cancer that eats away rapidly at one’s sense of self as well as one’s intrinsic dignity.

Emma must have done something right in raising Nicky, however, because on one of his birthdays following her departure, he befriends a homeless man named Chambers and brings him to his apartment (the pun on “chambers” is not lost on most readers) so that Chambers can take a shower and get something to eat. The building doorman does his job, however, and alerts Dr Sawyer, who sends along a brisk and snobbish nurse named Mary to get rid of Chambers, but not before Nicky learns to appreciate and demonstrate a sense of humanity. His mother would have been proud of him. So, too, is the sympathetic reader.

Regardless of whether he has us view life through the eyes of a mother or those of her child, Flusfeder never loses his grasp on maintaining the authenticity of tone. Emma’s internal monologues (redolent of extended streams of consciousness, occasionally even prose poetry) give one a more accurate sense of her inner frustration than a dozen different external viewpoints might have.

The moment where Nicky, strolling through a park in the Big Apple, comes across a couple of intriguing outdoor chess games, causes such a sense of wonder in the child that he uses some of his birthday funds to buy a pricey chess clock from FAO Schwarz. But both he and Chambers forget about the clock when they engage in a more important set of moves on the chessboard of life.

Densely packed though the novella is, at less than 100 pages, it is a fast and engrossing read. Flusfeder’s prose is tremendously engaging, and his command over character development is nothing short of flawless.

Even the detail that Nicholas Senior’s name was changed from the Ashkenazi Jewish “Seger” to the more WASP-ish “Sawyer” is loaded with meaning — since few characters conjure up an image of white American boyhood more vividly than Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer.

Something Might Fall is a novella that lends itself to repeated readings, because the language kaleidoscopically enables one to view a different set of images with every additional reading.

In its own quiet way, the novella is a work of pathos and sweetness, but I shall venture a step beyond that. In an even more subtle way, the book is a work of genius.

The reviewer is Associate Professor of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Institute of Business Administration. She has authored two collections of short stories, Timeless College Tales and Perennial College Tales and a play, The Political Chess King

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 14th, 2026

“Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,” they said in a statement sent to AFP.

Born in 1969 in Rasht in northern Iran, Satrapi arrived in France in 1994 and gained French nationality in 2006.

An outspoken critic of Iran’s theocratic government, Satrapi’s Persepolis recounts her early life in Tehran, struggling with restrictions imposed by Iran’s Islamic leadership after the 1979 revolution, before her parents sent her to Europe and she began a life in exile.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Satrapi, saying she was “a great artist who turned her Iranian childhood into a universal tale”.

The films she directed included a 2007 adaptation of the graphic novel of Persepolis — co-directed by Vincent Paronnaud — which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar.

“Even if this is a universal film, I want to dedicate this prize to all Iranians,” Satrapi told AFP at the time.

“Marjane was an extraordinary artist and a charming woman who embodied the joy of creation and the sorrow of exile and painful memories. We mourn her this morning,” Cannes festival supremo Thierry Fremaux told AFP.

‘Her courage will resonate’

She was a vocal supporter of the protests that erupted in the Islamic republic after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini while in custody for allegedly breaching the dress code for women.

She curated a collection of graphic stories on the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in her latest book that came out in English in 2024, and was among those at a protest in Paris that same year to mark two years since Amini’s death.

“It’s very important that this regime disappears,” she said of the Islamic republic, but she stressed it could not happen overnight.

“I think it’s important to remain hopeful.”

The foundation of Narges Mohammadi, the jailed Iranian Nobel peace prize winner, praised Satrapi as “a fearless voice for feminism, human rights, and freedom”.

“She consistently advocated for women’s rights, standing in solidarity with the people of Iran and amplifying the message of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement on the global stage,” it said.

“Her courage will continue to resonate far beyond her lifetime.”

Also a painter, in 2020 Satrapi exhibited a series of works she said she had spent the past seven years painting between other projects, speaking of a need to isolate herself from the world with her canvases.

“I think my mental health depends on it,” she said.

She said she believed in being a feminist through her actions.

“If I show that I know how to do things just as well as — or even better than — a man, then I’ve won the battle and I can be an example for the girl who will come after me,” she said.

‘Love of my life’

She said last year she had turned down France’s highest civilian honour, the legion d’honneur, accusing the country of “hypocrisy” over visa policies that prevented dissidents travelling from Iran to France.

“I can’t ignore what I see as a hypocritical attitude towards Iran, which forged the other part of my identity,” she wrote, adding that she meant no disrespect to the award and that she loved France “deeply”.

Her work expanded beyond stories connected to Iran, including Radioactive, a 2019 biopic about pioneering radioactivity researcher and Nobel-prize winner Marie Curie, starring Rosamund Pike.

Her husband, a Swedish producer, actor and screenwriter, had been a long-time collaborator.

After his death on April 8 last year, Satrapi founded the Mattias and Marjane Ripa-Satrapi Cinema Foundation to support foreign students wishing to come to Paris to study filmmaking.

Since he died, Satrapi’s Instagram page consisted almost exclusively of a series of images spelling out “For I lost the love of my life”, along with a picture of her husband and an announcement of the foundation.

It purported to be “Rooted in Pakistani myths and folklore”, which immediately made me think of the stories old servants used to tell in my childhood. In those days, they held my attention but, looking back, they just seemed to be bundles of nonsense. Now to have to read a whole book of similar stories was not going to be easy. As it turned out, I was wrong.

Maliha Rao, the author of Dark Tales of Wonder, is based in Karachi. She is a digital communications expert with two decades of experience in copywriting and brand storytelling. Some of her stories have been published in other anthologies. She has made horror her genre of choice and is a member of a thriving community of fantasy, horror and science fiction writers. Dark Tales of Wonder is made up of eight stories. The tales are short, concise and full of suspense. Almost from the first sentence, the reader knows something unacceptable and unexplainable is about to happen.

Interestingly, when supernatural activity is suspected, Rao’s characters turn towards Allah, but in oblique ways. The help of maulvis [clergymen] is sought, Zamzam holy water is sprinkled, tasbeehs [rosary beads] are rotated and the recitation of the Quran is listened to on phones. Rao states: “The world is full of impossible things.” This seems to be the common denominator of all the stories she writes. But even sceptical readers are hooked by the themes she explores and want to find out what transpires next.

A debut collection blends Pakistani folklore, supernatural beings and psychological dread into engrossing and suspenseful horror stories

In most cases, the demon, jinn or the otherworldly creature that is invading the mind and life of its prey is either huge in size or very small, like a dwarf. But all are frighteningly ugly and sometimes even emit a foul smell. The endings of the tales are also consistently the same. If it were not so, much greater tension could have been generated.

The first story, ‘The Rice Paddy’, features a man who has a genuine gift of engaging with the supernatural but, every time he exorcises an evil spirit, he feels depleted. His life is lonely and itinerant but he finally finds fulfilment when he helps a supernatural being wreak revenge.

In ‘Crumbs and Creatures’ we meet both a huge monster and a child-sized one, who both love eating biscuits. Before much harm is done, they are appeased and it is impressed upon the reader that every preternatural being is not malevolent. ‘The Wrath of the Boyo’ has only short-statured demons but they also love sugary stuff. When two preteen boys get into trouble with the boyo, it is a good spirit who saves them from harm and leaves her mark on one of them.

Small monsters who are lovers of sweets also make an appearance in ‘The Haunting of Taj.’ Here, the protagonist just wants to make sure that the hotel he has inherited remains financially viable. He neglects all warnings of supernatural presence in his single-minded endeavour to make the hotel regain its past glory. Only when he actually sees his daughter threatened by runty, dessert-gobbling demons does he become a believer. Again, in this story, it is two good spirits who help to save the young human girl.

Family dynamics come into play in the stories ‘It Lingers’ and ‘Unholy Ties.’ In the former, a family moves into a house with a dubious past and is confronted with strange happenings. Things disappear, lights dim of their own accord, and residents are attacked during sleep. Finally, a seer is brought into the picture to deal with the miasma invading their home. ‘Unholy Ties’ spins a really good yarn about a family which has gone through familial trauma and public censure. The daughter becomes possessed by an evil spirit that is egged on by a resentful relative. The final scene is satisfyingly gory.

These initial stories have minor errors in the syntax and in the narratives. Yet, the stories themselves are gripping and their plots are well-constructed.

The last two stories of the collection are written with a sure hand and flow smoothly from the author’s pen.

The first of the two, ‘Fear and Loathing in Karachi’, is centred round a young woman, Rania, who has been crippled psychologically because of a frightening experience in her adolescence. Ten years later she is still in treatment. Her two best friends manage to coax her to face her own demons and also the gigantic monster who threatens to annihilate all that she loves. Rao develops the character of Rania expertly and with a great deal of insight. The ending is ambiguous. Did Rania really kill the monster or did she slay the demons in her own mind and so find herself again?

The last story of the anthology is perhaps the best. It is beautifully conceptualised and executed. The plot is eminently believable and the characters are delineated unerringly. The hero, Aazer, could be someone we have known or, at least, met. His aspirations and his weaknesses are familiar to the reader and understandable, given the circumstances.

When he inadvertently becomes a victim of a female spirit, his family rallies round to assist him. The personage of the pir [holy man] whose help is sought to rid Aazer of the spirit is quite unique. Rao dispenses with the stock type of exorcist and introduces instead a character at once distinctive and interesting. The whiff of romance that begins to perfume the air at the end of the story just adds to the mastery of the writing.

Even unbelievers of the supernatural can enjoy this anthology. Every anecdote features the paranormal, but Rao makes sure to infuse each one with the right ingredients for a satisfying read. It is clear that she has taken pains over writing them and that the genre is close to her heart.

The author is to be congratulated for producing such an engrossing debut collection of stories.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 24th, 2026

The book is a thriller at one level and an introduction to Sufi lore at another. The gradual build-up of events and characters drives the dramatic suspense, while Sufi traditions retain their place at the core of the narration.

The central protagonists of the story are two women. Layla Rashid, the first one to step into the tale, is an academic at a liberal arts university in the US, where she teaches courses on storytelling with an emphasis on Sufi tradition. The other woman is Mira Heshmat, a well-known academic who has published books on Sufism and is regarded as an authority on the subject. Both women have led troubled lives and their devotion to the Sufi doctrine is an attempt to transcend their pain and move towards the attainment of inner peace.

The book is divided into three sections. The first, ‘The Beginning of the End’, sets the stage for the events that follow. It begins with a bang, as Layla walks into her university office/library to find the corpse of a woman spreadeagled on the floor. We learn that Layla had confronted a similar situation in the past, and this macabre repetition is not likely to be a sheer coincidence.

A novel blends suspense, trauma and Sufi philosophy into an ambitious thriller that is marred by an inconsistent style

Through some opaque hints scattered through the opening pages, we learn that Layla Rashid was separated from her mother early on in her life and has been searching for her ever since. The search brings her to this midwestern town, a long way from big city academia. She is intrigued by Heshmat and has followed her for a while, attending her public lectures, one of which is scheduled at her university. Heshmat’s lecture on the university campus turns out to be well-attended in spite of the disruption caused by the murder in the library.

After the lecture, Layla spots and introduces herself to Professor Reza, an academic whose work she has followed and who is now teaching at her university. The meeting is followed up by a chance encounter with Reza, and a student, Gul, who is taking both their courses. Differences arise in their positions on Sufism as Reza challenges Layla’s beliefs.

Layla’s search for her mother had taken her as far as the city of Lahore, 10 years earlier. Hasina, her adopted mother, had accompanied her. While the trip did not yield any promising clues, it brought a romantic interest into her life. She meets and falls in love with Khayyam, an artist born and bred in the notorious Diamond Market or Heera Mandi in Lahore. Khayyam has also been tracking a missing parent — his father in his case. His search comes to a painful end. Layla, not ready yet to make a commitment to the close relationship that develops with Khayyam, chooses to disengage and return to the US.

The story takes a not too credible turn when Khayyam shows up one fine morning on Layla’s campus. The two try to catch up on events in their respective lives after their brief liaison in Lahore.

The author then launches Book Two, titled ‘The Beginning’, a first-person account of a kidnapping and an eventual flight to freedom. This is where the story picks up speed.

A film team wandering deep inside Taliban territory is ambushed by a local warlord and his men. The only woman in the team is separated from the men and taken to the hideout of Gulraiz, the tribal chieftain. Thus begins a harrowing tale of abuse, as the woman recounts how she was forced into marriage with Gulraiz, confined to a room in his house and beaten every time she tried to escape from her prison. She is left inside a cave to recover from the injuries a furious Gulraiz inflicts upon her. In the cave, she meets Kamli, a woman dismissed as crazy by the other women in Gulraiz’s harem. Kamli treats her injuries with traditional medicine and offers stories to heal the soul.

One of several hair-raising escape attempts eventually succeeds. The woman is taken to the US embassy in Kabul along with her daughter and repatriated to the US. An older daughter and her son are left behind.

Meanwhile the story comes back to the present and Layla confronts the possibility that has led her to follow Heshmat around from campus to campus.

Book Three, ‘The End of the Beginning’, reveals the identity of Layla’s birth mother. Meanwhile, the serial killer who seems to be bent on creating trouble for Layla strikes again. This time the victim is found in Layla’s apartment.

Mira is psychic and has helped the police track down a killer in a different case. She is called in to help with this one. Mira and Layla get together to muse over symbols and patterns that may reveal the crux of this story.

The story is an interesting one and well told for the most part. However, the two men in the story — Khayyam and Reza — are only sketchily developed. Some of the gaps in their stories are addressed in the climax, but they remain on the periphery even when they serve to move the story forward.

There is a lack of consistency in terms of style as the free-flowing account is interrupted now and then by dialogue that is so formal and convoluted that it is hard to imagine even academics choosing to use it. However, Mansab has taken on a difficult task in welding together iconic theory with its consequences for daily life and, in this respect, she acquits herself well.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 17th, 2026

The prestigious award, which was handed out in a ceremony at London’s Tate Modern gallery, recognises works of fiction from around the world that have been translated into English.

Taiwan Travelogue is the first book translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the award, and Yang, born in 1984, is the first Taiwanese winner of the prize, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Set in 1930s Japan-controlled Taiwan, the book poses as a translation of a rediscovered Japanese travel memoir penned by fictional writer Aoyama Chizuko.

It traces Chizuko’s travels and gastronomic adventures across the colonial outpost, and the intimate relationship she develops with her Taiwanese interpreter Chizuru.

“This is a book that surprises and isn’t perhaps what it seems like on the surface,” said chair of the judges, Natasha Brown.

It “pulls off an incredible double feat: it succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel,” said Brown. “It’s a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel.” The book beat out a story about a suburban witch by French novelist and playwright Marie NDiaye as well as Brazilian Ana Paula Maia’s dystopian read about a brutal prison colony.

The other shortlisted works were The Nights Are Quiet In Tehran by German writer Shida Bazyar, She Who Remains by Bulgarian poet and writer Rene Karabash, and The Director by German-Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann, the only male author on the list.

Organisers say the award gives the authors writing in languages other than English a significant boost in profile and sales.

Previous winners Han Kang, Annie Ernaux and Olga Tokarczuk have gone on to become Nobel laureates.

Also a writer of manga and video game scripts, this was Yang’s first book translated into English, by Taiwanese-American King.

They will share the £50,000 ($67,000) prize money.

The book was first published in Mandarin in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award.

“The novel’s central themes of travel and food changed my life in two obvious ways: my savings went down; my weight went up,” Yang said.

The Golden Boy
Rawalpindi, Pakistan
1955 – 1970 – 1979

Bayazid never knew how he came to be a little boy alone in the streets of Rawalpindi. He had a memory more of forces than of people, a crowd, a hand, a hand no more.

Yet the bazaars in those early 1950s were not so crowded as that, and Rawalpindi a town small enough that a lost little boy should be found. That was a bitter day when he accepted years later that there might have been no hand, no desperate parent seeking him in the crowd. He might have been abandoned, not lost.

Karim Khan, the owner of the tea and curry stall where his known history began, could tell him only that he had been sitting in front of the stall on a fine winter day, three or four years old, wearing just a shalwar qameez, barefoot and clean, holding a new pair of cheap plastic shoes tightly in his arms, as if afraid they would be taken away, and scanning the crowds passing by. The shoes had caught Karim Khan’s eye, not only because they were brand-new, but because the children of the streets, those sparrows, ran barefoot always.

In those early years following the great Indian Partition, families drifted about, mothers dead, fathers dead, murdered for religion’s sake, for politics, unwelcome children without parents thrown on some relative’s mercy. Karim Khan thought this must be one of those stories, Hindus stuck on the wrong side of the border and on the run, an unwanted child — though that didn’t explain the shoes.

Karim Khan kept an eye on the boy all through the afternoon and evening, serving customers by the light of a hissing pressure-gas lantern, dishing up daal or a meat curry that grew more delicious each year, for he never washed out the fire-blackened pots that sat over the coals, but replenished them with a double handful of lentils or meat, beef or mutton, whichever was cheaper, the mix of meat juices adding to its savour.

Through a kaleidoscope of colourful and complex characters and intersecting stories, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s debut novel captures the extraordinary proximity of wealth to extreme poverty in Pakistan, and the hunger to better one’s station in life. Eos presents, with permission, an excerpt from This is Where the Serpent Lives, published by Alfred A. Knopf…

The boy had a remarkable power of concentration, immobile all day and seeming quite unperturbed, but for the fierceness with which he held the shoes. He stood out even then as a person not to be treated lightly, as a being with resources of spirit, if not of fortune.

When Karim Khan finally approached him, the boy brushed him off, politely but firmly. He was waiting for his mother, who would soon be back, and must not move from this spot. Rebuffed, Karim Khan retreated back to his cook fire, the evening crowd getting a quick bite before taking a bus from the nearby station up to the mountains or out to the plains, for the shop served mostly travellers.

Finally, when the crowds had died, when pye-dogs began sniffing around under the charpoys in front of the food stall for a last chicken bone or scrap of dry bread, when the lights in the shops along the road faltered out, and the cold came down from the Margalla Hills so that breath showed in a little cloud, Karim Khan went to the boy, and took his hand, and drew him away from the road and over by the fire.

“Come on, have a dish of my curry,” he told the boy. “You’re shivering, you’ll get sick. Sit here and eat, you can still keep watch.” The boy came along easily enough then, his will weakened by hunger, heavy-headed over food and then burrowing under a blanket that Karim Khan pulled over him, lying on a charpoy in the open-fronted veranda where the cook fire had just gone out, asleep so quick.

At dawn he was back by the road, and for that whole day too he watched, not crying but just resolute, knowing that of course they would come back, his mother and father. Admiring the boy’s remarkable tenacity, pitying him, Karim Khan fed him morning, midday and evening with unsold chapaatis and the leavings from customers’ half-eaten plates — which otherwise would be poured back into the general pot.

Yazid grew up exceptionally large for a Pakistani, six feet tall by the time he first began shaving, and strong: big hands, big feet, a large head. He tended to be slovenly rather than unclean, ate enormously but without much discrimination, worked day and night slowly but implacably, and was a neighbourhood pet as a little boy, and a person of accepted station by the time he was thirteen. He didn’t banter or fling himself around, as teahouse boys often do — but had a humour that called forth smiles in return, and accepted all who accepted him, and damn the rest, and even them he forgave easily.

That evening, Karim Khan said to him firmly, “Come on, little man. I’m not rich enough to feed you on charity. From now on you clean up and carry out the plates and then we’ll see. Until your people come.” Earlier, he had been to the nearby police station but, as he expected, found the duty officer there quite uninterested in a street boy’s troubles. In any case, the boy had struck his fancy, though no one would have accused that Mardani Pathan of being fanciful, with his wife back home awaiting money and three daughters there to feed, and this food stall his enterprise, and his pride too — he’d built it up from a little cart that he hawked around the train station.

Karim Khan, who was a good man, took the boy in and named him Bayazid, after a Sufi mystic who was known to him rather as a magician, jadoogar — more fancy, indulging himself in poetry! — and treated him not like a son, perhaps, but like a cherished apprentice, miniature serving boy, dishwasher, runner, paid in food and treated unsentimentally but fairly, hardly any use at first, then gradually indispensable.

Yazid grew up exceptionally large for a Pakistani, six feet tall by the time he first began shaving, and strong: big hands, big feet, a large head. He tended to be slovenly rather than unclean, ate enormously but without much discrimination, worked day and night slowly but implacably, and was a neighbourhood pet as a little boy, and a person of accepted station by the time he was thirteen. He didn’t banter or fling himself around, as teahouse boys often do — but had a humour that called forth smiles in return, and accepted all who accepted him, and damn the rest, and even them he forgave easily.

Most remarkably, Yazid had a long view of bettering himself, told to no one, an ambling bear moving to his own North. He taught himself to read, first learning the alphabet, buying government school grammars with his own money, encouraged and corrected by one of the regular customers, a schoolteacher who came in the afternoons for a cup of tea, and whom he treated with ceremony and respect that kept the tuition flowing. To the extent that Karim Khan thought of such things, he accepted this as one of the boy’s caprices, a distraction in any station that he might achieve, but better than going to the cinema or flying kites.

At ten, Yazid would read aloud the Urdu newspaper to illiterate Karim Khan, a morning ritual after the shop was opened and before the customers came, choosing the stories that he knew his boss would like. At fourteen and fifteen, he could be found whenever he wasn’t working reading gruesome stories of murder, or stories of thwarted love or lovers dying requited, bought secondhand from stalls and bound like magazines, with lurid pictures on the covers of fat-bummed girls and moustachioed men, lovers or enemies, kidnapped or eloping or on the lam, as only time and a hundred pages would tell.

One spring, when Yazid was seventeen or eighteen, the Nizamuddin College boys developed a passion for carrom board, poor man’s billiards, played on a plywood square with the object of knocking round plastic pucks into corner pockets with a striker. Suddenly that year, boys all over Pakistan were playing the game, in cities and towns, with federations and tournaments and newspaper coverage.

Yazid had charmed hands, became a master at making chapaatis, hunkered cross-legged over the tandoor, slapping the flattened dough down into its orange-glowing maw. He learned the technique of making naan, doing it so well that the shop became known for it, the local housewives bringing pots to fill with daal and curry, a treat for their poor homes in the nearby alleys, and a bundle of naan too, flecked with sesame seeds, oiled shiny, crisp and then soft inside, hot and wrapped in day-old newspapers.

“Always your nose in a book,” said the regulars, and were rather proud of him as he handed over the goods and picked up and resumed his reading, sitting under a lone bulb hanging from a wire.

The bazaar around the food shop had been established in British times, with some newer office buildings of two and even three stories, a little park, and next to the park, the Sir Khawaja Nizamuddin Government High School, known simply as Nizamuddin College and acknowledged to be among the best in the city. The boys wore uniforms — blazer, straight-legged khaki pants, and pointed black shoes, even a blue-and-brown striped tie, which made them conspicuous at a time when most Pakistanis wore shalwar qameez.

They would come to Karim Khan’s food shop in the morning for a rusk and tea, or in the afternoon after school for daal, standing around the lean-to and shovelling the food into their mouths, shouting and making a clatter, very conscious of their uniforms and their elite status. These were the sons of the wealthier houses nearby, of business owners, owners of the larger shops, local ward politicians, wholesalers, members of a rising middle class, defined at the higher reaches by the ownership of a car, and at the bottom by the necessity of making hard sacrifices to buy their sons’ uniforms and pay for extra tuition.

Sitting at the tandoor and pushing out piles of chapaatis and naan, rising teenage Yazid had ample time to study these fortunate creatures. Gradually, he began to bend his attitude and his appearance toward theirs, not quite affecting to wear pant-shirt, which would make him ridiculous in the eyes of Karim Khan and of customers, but cutting off his long hair, which had been modelled on gangsters in the movies, taming his rich sideburns, ditto adopted from the movies, and generally toning down his naturally exuberant style, though his loose walk and large appetite and size would always set him apart.

Rarely leaving the food stall, Yazid yet knew much about the world, for he was observant, and all sorts came through the bus station en route to their far destinations. Weary travellers dropped their bags and filled travel-starved bellies with savoury curries and his hot-oiled naans and, afterward, unbuttoned themselves to the sympathetic serving boy, indiscreet because they would never see him again.

Gradually, as he became familiar with the college boys, he understood that their views were rather narrower than his, and this gave him confidence. While they might have fine manners and live in proper houses, cossetted by their mothers and sisters, they were tame and didn’t penetrate very far toward an understanding of the unforgiving streets and city.

He formed friendships with the college boys, never presuming on his acquaintance, always ready to step back into character as the fellow behind the tandoor, sparing himself from any rebuff by this discretion. Yet he observed them closely and bided his time. He wanted to make friends among them rather than among the boys like him who worked the shops and sold cheap trinkets to travellers and ran the scams around the gullies, gutter princes, loud and quick to dodge a slap, smoking cigarettes, shouting after the begging girls who floated around the bus stop unchaperoned.

One spring, when Yazid was seventeen or eighteen, the Nizamuddin College boys developed a passion for carrom board, poor man’s billiards, played on a plywood square with the object of knocking round plastic pucks into corner pockets with a striker. Suddenly that year, boys all over Pakistan were playing the game, in cities and towns, with federations and tournaments and newspaper coverage. Crowds of the college boys would gather around a charpoy set in front of the food stall, playing for cups of tea or plates of biscuits, standing in circles around the board with the seriousness of parliamentary debaters, discussing strategy, the real experts bringing their own favourite strikers.

Yazid would serve out the snacks they ordered and stand watching, occasionally dropping in some humorous comment. Initially they had a miniature board, which they would carry to Karim Khan’s stall, but when they banded together and bought a regulation-sized one, three feet to a side, Yazid offered to store it for them in the shop. He thus became the master of ceremonies, keeper of the board. He even found a rule book in one of the secondhand bookstalls and studied it and so became the acknowledged umpire, his word on the finer points accepted as final.

At night, alone, he would practise shots in his room, and so himself became an ace, rarely playing, because of his duties as a server, hard to get and therefore in demand, called when some outsider sat down and cleared the table of the locals. In the middle of a game, as he wiped out his opponent, putting away puck after puck with his striker, Yazid would say, chewing the tip of his mustache in the corner of his mouth, “I’m feasting on him, just feasting on him”, and this became a catchall phrase for the college boys, used indiscriminately.

By the time summer came, when it was too hot to sit and play out in front of the food stall, a little core had formed around Yazid. The centre of operations for the carrom players shifted to Yazid’s shabby room attached to the food stall, formerly a storeroom, looking on to a gully on the side.

For his first eight or nine years working for Karim Khan, Yazid slept rough on one of the charpoys lined up on a swept dirt apron in front of the stall, never even bothering to choose any one particular spot, but sleeping where he fell, cheerful under the stars, a fan to cool him in summer, and his clothes hung on nails in the filthy toilet that leaked sewage out into a little grassy plot at the back of the building, his comb on a shelf and then later a shaver and soap to make foam.

He hadn’t asked for the room. Karim Khan had told him one morning to empty the storeroom of the garbage lying there, empty Dalda ghee tins and piles of jute bags. Yazid had become too old, said Karim Khan, to be sprawled every morning in front of the stall, sleeping late as he often did and comfortably watching the street in front of him come to life as if in his own living room.

Now the room became a sort of clubhouse for the carrom players, so much so that several of the boys chipped in and had it whitewashed inside by a withered opium smoker who made a living in the neighbourhood as a handyman. There were two charpoys, with a table that held the board squeezed between them, teacups crowded to the side, players sitting cross-legged.

The great luxury was a ceiling fan, given to Yazid secondhand by some buddy in the neighbourhood, which made him the butt of his friends’ jokes, who called it proof of his love of fine living. He also nailed pictures of actresses cut from the Sunday papers on the rough brick walls, although these soon were dust covered and flyblown and quite unregarded.

What the boys liked about this arrangement was that nothing was expected of them in that room. There were no rules, all came and went as they liked, they played carrom or they didn’t, sometimes they played cards or just talked, sometimes one of them would be in a jam and would sleep there for a night or two. The college boys, who mostly came from respectable families, did not enjoy such freedom anywhere else.

Yazid had the one indispensable quality for a man establishing a club: he was always at home, sitting in the veranda of the stall making naan and chapaatis, or slumbering in his room if he had no guests and, even if he had gone off somewhere on an errand, the room was never locked.

Karim Khan had by now taken up another little boy off the streets, this one of known parentage but with parents who asked no questions and gave him up to this business as a riddance. Yazid thus assumed an emeritus position in the enterprise, though he still made the naan and still dealt with the cash when Karim Khan wasn’t present.

The old man — by then he would have been over seventy, wiry and likely to live forever — would go off to his home in Mardan for several weeks at a time and, when he returned, Yazid would hand him every paisa that the shop earned, keeping a notebook with any subtractions carefully noted, cigarettes, a trip to the cinema, for he still took no salary, but asked for money when he needed it — never asking for much, a few times asking a lot, given over by Karim Khan without ever a question.

One afternoon, several of the boys had gone shares on a case of pilfered beer sold from the back gate of the Murree Brewery, a side-line for the brewery workers. Kamran Khokar, a senior boy whose father was a councillor in the Rawalpindi wards, knew one of the brewery managers, knew all sorts of tricks and could get his fellow students into scrapes and then out of them unscathed. A junior school student who served as Kamran’s bullyboy and gofer brought the bottles in a gunny sack, the jute wet from being stashed in a nearby icehouse that belonged to yet another student’s father.

“Is it cold?” asked Kamran, pulling one of the bottles out of the sack and putting it against his face. “Oh, it better be cold!” He pinched the boy’s cheek and slapped him gently. “You’re lucky, anyway,” he said indulgently. “It is cold.”

Yazid loomed over the carrom board planning a shot, his thick fingers dusted with the talcum powder they used to slick the surface. Without looking up, he said indifferently, “Take some money, it’s in that vest hanging up there.”

“There you go again,” said Kamran, sitting down and putting the sack under the charpoy, pulling out bottles and handing them around. There were three other people in the room, the boy who brought the beer and two others of the core gang. “You drink on the house, we all know you’re broke.”

“I am the house,” said Yazid complacently. He took the beer and popped the top off with a quick smack on the wooden charpoy leg, catching it neatly in the air and shooting it into the corner — one of his tricks.

“You’re not a house,” retorted Kamran, “you’re a barrel. It costs the rest of us a fortune keeping you full.”

“I keep telling you not to bring all that garbage. You guys with your bags of samosas and God knows what. This is a tea stall, remember? I eat free.”

The younger boys grinned at Yazid’s insouciance with the big square-headed school bully. Kamran walked with a swagger and played the same role in the school that his father played in his ward of the city, keeping a hand in all the pies and pushing in wherever he could. He kept close to the powers above him, young Kamran trustee to the Nizamuddin College headmaster, unctuous when he needed to be, playing enforcer, too. They had nicknamed him Cuckoo, after the parasitic bird that drives its siblings from the nest because, sometimes for sport and to keep his hand in practice, he would beat up his squeaky elder brother.

Soon a heavy fug of cigarette smoke hung over the players. They were betting for small stakes, Yazid winning, talking a bit of trash down to his opponents, studying the board the way chess players do, then cracking a shot, making cunning deflections and rebounds.

Another boy came in, Zain, whose grandfather and now father owned the old British grocery in Rawalpindi, selling fancy produce and select foods to the civil servants and officers and diplomats stationed there, the family distinguished by this commerce with foreigners and the wealthy, more worldly for it. He stood at the door, without entering, looked at Yazid and caught his eye, nodded.

“Hey mister, come in and slum around with us a bit,” said Yazid affectionately, patting the charpoy beside himself.

“I’ll come back later. I brought you something.”

He stepped into the room and put a bag of apples on a charpoy, then continued standing by the door. “From my father,” he said. “We just got them in at the store.”

“Look at him!” cooed Kamran. “He’s so shy. It’s adorable!”

Yazid and Zain had taken to spending time together, one of those odd couples, Yazid big and broad and hirsute, walking with his rolling gait, and Zain small and fine and finicky, with small hands, small feet, a long straight nose, and curly hair worn slightly long in the back as his single extravagance, even in this following the fashion rather than defining it.

Zain brought Yazid serious books, not like the romances and adventure stories that formed his usual literary diet, histories and leftist political tracts, his father an old-school lefty from the days of the anti-British movement, despite or because of his regular interactions at the store with the blimps and pukka sahibs and their wives. Yazid jokingly called Zain the Professor and took pride in the connection.

“Tell your friend to sit down and join us,” said Kamran. “Give him a beer, it’ll do him good. Tell him not to be so ladylike.”

“I can speak for myself,” said Zain sharply.

Zain did, in fact, seem too prim for the situation. Slipping in, he perched at the edge of a charpoy near the door, legs crossed, then borrowed a penknife from Yazid and cut up apples and passed around slices fanned on the palm of his hand. The other boys all thought there must be something going on between him and Yazid, a common enough occurrence at an age and in circumstances where girls were quite unavailable and hormones in full raging flush, Pakistani boys and their boy crushes, and all forgotten when they married in a few years.

“Leave him alone,” grunted Yazid. “Cut the bullshit and let’s play.”

“Playing with you is like shovelling money into a well,” grumbled Kamran. “I’d rather bullshit.”

“It’s a paisa a point, man. Nothing for the rich politician’s son! Anyway, it’s good luck, tossing coins in a well.”

“My coins and your luck, boy. I bring the booze, and then I pay for the privilege, too.”

Boys came and went, Yazid playing or relinquishing the table if he lost, a freewheeling game. Only a few of the boys drank, the ones who knew they could slip past their parents at the end of the evening, Kamran and a couple of his close buddies.

Yazid kept up too, chugging off bottles when challenged to by Kamran, the two of them rivals here as in other things, in carrom board, in cards, even in arm wrestling, the son of the ward boss ready to crack heads.

Excerpted with permission from This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin and published by Alfred A. Knopf

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, May 17th, 2026

The book’s focus is on diasporic Khoja Shia Ismaili women from the Subcontinent who faced multiple, often violent, displacements from India, East Africa and what was once known as East Pakistan.

This work of scholarship was made possible by the extensive time the author invested in building personal relationships with her interlocutors, whose stories and histories form the basis for the core argument that the work presents: that the community’s women have unceasingly performed undocumented and unacknowledged acts of service [seva] to steadfastly reproduce the ethical infrastructure necessary for a continued flourishing of their faith.

At the outset of the book, detailing the period from 1890 to 1970, the author frames the farmaans [diktats] of the imam [religious leader] as the impetus for the migratory routes that women, led by their patriarchs, took to access a safer future for themselves and their children, rooted firmly in their faith. It was this same faith that they drew strength from during arduous journeys with limited access to core necessities such as adequate food.

Across continents, Khoja Shia Ismaili women stitch together community, memory and belonging in this rich ethnographic account

Here, the reader is also introduced to early pro-female interventions by the imam in the examples of his encouragement of girls to pursue higher levels of educational and professional attainment, an offshoot of which was seen in women in the Zanzibar Khoja community of the time being empowered with bicycles that afforded them ease in commuting and enabling their professional quests.

In the early 20th century in Zanzibar, the book reveals that women from the community created makeshift shops in their homes’ porches to supplement their husbands’ meagre incomes. These women did not just perform acts of care for their families but also laboured long hours to add a source of income to their households, in addition to opening their homes to community members who had recently arrived on the shores and needed help settling into the alien country.

Moving through the chapters, we learn of the centrality of the jamaatkhana [community space for gathering and worship] to the community and of the vital role of women in creating makeshift jamaatkhanas within their small homes, to ensure the continuity of faith practices even in times of flux.

At the outset of the book, detailing the period from 1890 to 1970, the author frames the farmaans [diktats] of the imam [religious leader] as the impetus for the migratory routes that women, led by their patriarchs, took to access a safer future for themselves and their children, rooted firmly in their faith. It was this same faith that they drew strength from during arduous journeys with limited access to core necessities such as adequate food.

As Khoja Ismaili communities found their footing in the new lands that they were forced to make ‘home’, primal importance was given to the near-immediate establishment of a formal jamaatkhana. Within the formal jamaatkhana, the author spotlights communal work — such as cooking meals, washing dishes used in daily and communal feasts, sweeping floors and cleaning toilets — that became women’s work.

Through the retelling of the personal histories of the interlocutors, we learn that the women performing these acts of service did so not for any gain or acknowledgement, but from a place of devotion to their faith, which continued to carry them through the peaks and valleys of their lives — lives forged through continual challenges and upheavals.

By focusing on the daily ‘mundanities’ (cooking, cleaning) that allow sacred spaces such as the jamaatkhanas to operate, readers come to realise the impossibility of practising faith in familiar ways in the absence of the women who take proud ownership of their roles in the continuation of acts of service. These acts make the sacred spaces functional, so that other members of the community may experience within it all that falls within the domain of the spiritual.

As the book journeys through time and space, it reaches women from the community belonging to the North American diaspora. Here, the author explores culinary placemaking through cookbooks. These cookbooks, authored by Khoja Ismaili women, serve dual roles: as records of a sensorial history of the community through its foods, as well as serving future generations with a record of their roots, so they may, in turn, recreate a sense of communal belonging. This is provided through familiar foods that hold the history of a people that have traversed impossibly difficult terrains without ever losing sight of the faith that binds them.

The author includes second-generation accounts of the Shia Ismaili diasporic experience, again with the lens on women, towards the final pages of the book. Here, we see a dynamic display of this generation’s acts of seva manifesting through art, academia and technology in unique ways.

From digital seminars and academic dissertations that don’t shy away from the anti-Black racism of the community during its time in East Africa, to artwork that beautifully depicts the contemporary anti-Brown discrimination faced by women from the second generation, we see a complex tapestry of women from the community engaging with the faith tradition that they have inherited and proudly made their own.

Engaging with Shenila Khoja-Moolji’s work as an outsider to the Shia Ismaili community, as this reviewer has, enriches readers with insight into a faith group that, in our national context, is sometimes actively ostracised. To any Muslim interested in learning about the multitudinous ways Islam manifests in the times we live in, this book rewards the curious reader with a glimpse into the sacred material and non-material worlds through which the community continues to thrive.

Its focus on women’s acts of care as vehicles for communal continuity provides yet more evidence of the importance of women’s work in the arena of faith propagation, a space that has far too long been perceived as the domain of the masculine.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 10th, 2026

Fiction writers often peel back the layers of their characters’ histories to make them more three-dimensional, realistic and intriguing. This technique opens a doorway into their hidden emotional lives and even allows them an opportunity to identify and address their traumas.

Poet, publisher and novelist Safinah Danish Elahi’s oeuvre also harbours a preoccupation with the past. However, her three novels don’t employ the motif in a clichéd manner, where scandalous revelations about characters overshadow their emotional and spiritual growth. Instead, turning the clock back to a bygone era serves as a clarion call, urging people to recognise their responsibilities to themselves and others.

In Eye on the Prize, fragile bonds remain intact because the characters choose to overlook an adolescent mistake in order to protect those who are vulnerable. The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon explores the lingering echoes of a traumatic childhood tragedy in the life of two unlikely friends. As they deal with their dilemmas, the protagonists learn a valuable lesson about empathy and humanity.

Across time and space, four friends discover that the past is not something left behind — but something that shapes the present

Chasing Shadows in Borrowed Light is built on a similar template, insofar as it offers yet another captivating exploration of how the past seeps into the present. Like her previous fictional offerings, Elahi’s third novel places the turmoil of a troubled girl at its epicentre.

Above all, this new work, like The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon, adopts a multi-character perspective. However, each character’s viewpoint is filtered through a detached third-person voice, rather than the immersive first-person perspective employed in Elahi’s sophomore novel. This stylistic shift constructs a barrier between the characters and readers, thereby lending an aura of mystery to the narrative.

A quick glance at the back cover text promises a poignant tale about adolescent friendships that evolve as time, distance and dark secrets threaten old affinities. The plot is deceptively simple yet layered. Saira, Ashar, Usman and Areen once lived in Karachi, the city of their teenage triumphs, rebellions and emotional catastrophes. Now, three of them have fashioned new homes for themselves in Australia and the US, and inhabit different spheres largely detached from their roots. Nevertheless, their destinies remain inextricably linked to Karachi because of a secret that scars all of them, especially Areen.

Years later, when Karachi-based Saira receives an unsettling message from Areen — now an artist in New York — she reaches out to Ashar and Usman to enlist them in yet another attempt to ensure their friend’s well-being. Fuelled by habit, or a desire to protect their struggling companion, Saira, Usman and Ashar slip back into their predefined and well-rehearsed roles. It does not take them long to realise that the thrills and terrors of the past run the risk of obstructing the dynamics of the present, leading all four of them to revive their forgotten, transgressive selves.

The twists and turns of Chasing Shadows in Borrowed Light cannot be delineated without revealing spoilers. The strength of Elahi’s narrative lies in its ability to deviate from the predictable path and employ numerous methods to draw readers into this suspenseful work. The narrative is sculpted as a mosaic, and readers are encouraged to piece together a sea of fragments into a cohesive whole. Instead of following a linear trajectory, the story alternates between past and present, specifically 2008 and 2022.

The reader’s curiosity is initially sparked by a succinct prologue, in which ravenous flames lick every corner of a room and reduce it to ashes. As the “flames glow bright orange like the sun in its prime”, fear instantly finds residence in the room. Through this opening sequence, readers gain an inkling of the personal and emotional degradation that haunts the pages of Elahi’s novel.

The sinister undertone of Chasing Shadows in Borrowed Light is reinforced by an omniscient yet reserved narrator. Resembling a strategic poker player, the all-knowing, wily narrator conceals their hand and allows key information to fall gradually into the reader’s lap. These techniques transform the novel into an intricate puzzle for readers to solve.

The plot is deceptively simple yet layered. Saira, Ashar, Usman and Areen once lived in Karachi, the city of their teenage triumphs, rebellions and emotional catastrophes. Now, three of them have fashioned new homes for themselves in Australia and the US, and inhabit different spheres largely detached from their roots. Nevertheless, their destinies remain inextricably linked to Karachi because of a secret that scars all of them, especially Areen.

The centrepiece of Elahi’s third novel is the final section, which skilfully employs the second-person perspective to reveal the fragility of Areen’s fractured mind. This proves to be an effective technique, as it achieves a level of intimacy and discomfort that a first-person account might not have conveyed.

Driven by quiet but chaotic restraint, the final section begins to resemble the pages of an emotionally disturbed artist’s diary. The peculiar darkness of Areen’s mind is mirrored in the urgent, affecting prose, which reminds readers of the importance of therapy in addressing the burdens of unresolved traumas.

Elahi’s novels have sought to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health. Chasing Shadows in Borrowed Light consolidates this commitment by urging us to prioritise our own psychological well-being while also recognising the plight of those who must carry the debilitating weight of emotional trauma.

Elahi ought to be commended for the profoundly original title of her new novel that, incidentally, echoes her characters’ emotional trajectory. Throughout the novel, the four friends are haunted by the shadows of the past, which they pursue and seek to escape in equal measure.

Ashar struggles to cope with a painful history of grief. Saira is driven by the muscle memory of empathy she once exercised as a silent witness to Areen’s traumatic experiences during their teenage years. Usman, who has escaped and created some semblance of a stable future for himself, is still guided by the pleasant memories of someone he once abandoned. Areen carries the trauma of an abusive childhood, compounded by the guilt of the actions she took to shield herself from harm. The group gradually learns to deal with the futility of their individual pursuits, except for Areen, who plunges deeper into an emotional vortex.

Beyond its focus on the psychological journey of its cast of characters, Chasing Shadows in Borrowed Light captures the complexities of Pakistani expatriate life without relying on stereotypical assumptions. Furthermore, the novel carries faint echoes of Kamila Shamsie’s Kartography, albeit without its political dimensions.

Stripped of this layer, Elahi’s new work emerges as a more personal glimpse into the lives of ordinary Karachiites grappling with childhood trauma, and their complex relationship with home amid the pressures of globalisation.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 10th, 2026

The term ‘katabasis’ literally means a journey to the underworld, whereby a living individual heroically goes all the way to the kingdom of the dead for a specific purpose. In classical mythology, some of the most famous examples of such heroes are Orpheus and Aeneas.

The novel, which is a work of fantasy set in the realm of an alternative reality, begins by noting that the protagonist Alice Law’s Cambridge adviser Jacob Grimes has been blown up due to a magical experiment that went horribly wrong. So devastating was the death that his eviscerated body and mutilated remains could only be collected in a bucket by the university’s janitorial scouts! Since Grimes was, unquestionably, one of the top names in Cambridge’s Department of Analytic Magick, Alice is dismayed at the prospect of having to shift to an inferior academic adviser, who will not be able to provide the references and connections that Grimes could have.

Unquestionably brilliant herself and undeniably driven, Alice sketches a complex pentagram and prepares to sojourn to the underworld, armed with a Perpetual Flask (of enchanted drinking water that never runs out) and Lembas Bread (highly enriched protein bars ideal for such macabre camping trips). Much to her dismay, another highly talented advisee of Grimes’, Peter Murdoch (originally educated at Oxford), shows up and insists on accompanying her to hell.

After an academic adviser is blown up in a magical experiment, two of his students make a perilous journey to the underworld to rescue him in this fantasy novel.

Kuang’s version of the underworld is a combination of that alluded to in Dante’s Inferno and Chinese mythology (one of its major deities is the grim god Yama or Yanluo Wang). She keeps her landscape logical and relatively simple. Alice and Peter are expected to proceed through seven levels of the underworld, namely Pride, Desire, Greed, Wrath, Violence, Cruelty and Tyranny, before ending up at the Eighth Court and pleading with Yama to return Dr Grimes to the land of the living. They have to be careful to avoid the waters of Lethe (which in Greek mythology was the river of forgetfulness) since the river has the ability to obliterate memories, purpose and consciousness.

Although they respect each other as academics, Alice and Peter squabble a great deal along the way about sundry topics, ranging from conundrums of logic to complex mathematical paradoxes. Their innate humanity and engaging interactions undeniably count as the best part of the book. Both ranked among Grimes’ best students, but he was a nasty and phenomenally egotistical man who subjected them to a great deal of emotional abuse and mental cruelty. Their intrepid journey ultimately ends up being less about retrieving Grimes and more about wrestling with their internal demons, which are symbolic of his unhealthy hold over them both.

Kuang does a wonderful job of depicting the power struggles that constitute the dark heart of academic life. Some of the major characters whom Peter and Alice encounter are the souls (referred to in the book as ‘Shades’ per classical tradition) of intellectually gifted individuals who killed themselves because they were unable to cope with the obscene pressures, jealousies and rivalries of the world’s highest ranking and most illustrious academic institutions.

For instance, a former advisee of Grimes named Elspeth, could have had a very fine career had she not been irreparably damaged on the psychological level by the cruelty of her adviser. Fundamentally a decent woman, albeit batty and eccentric, Elspeth proves instrumental in helping Alice reach Yama.

“She was deep in Cruelty. At some point in the night she had made the crossing; perhaps the Escher trap had been at the border of Violence and Cruelty all along. The change was a difference not in kind, but in degree. Both were desert planes, but where Violence was harsh and mindless, Cruelty was littered with intention. Cruelty f****d with you on purpose. She kept coming across mysterious structures — interlacing bone, precipitously balanced, arranged occasionally like abstract art. Shapes carved out on the sand. Footsteps, maybe human, dancing in patterns she couldn’t make sense of.” — Excerpt from the book

One of the most memorable characters in the novel is Archimedes, a Cambridge cat who can bridge the gulf between the world of the living and that of the dead. His sense of morality is more honourable than that of most of the human figures in the novel, including its protagonists. Neither Alice nor Peter, however, are as sadistic and demented as the Kripke trio, a pair of dark magicians and their son who prey on the more helpless beings in the underworld.

As it progresses, the book begins to display darker undertones. Much to their horror, Peter and Alice discover that it was due to their own errors that Grimes’ magical pentagram had ended up killing him. Any reader will ask himself or herself why Grimes didn’t notice a rookie mistake in the spell he was casting.

In order to appreciate this point, one needs to keep in mind that major academics tend to be notoriously careless about looking over academic minutiae. On a personal level, I was rather amused once, when I was working at the American University in Cairo, to find that an Egyptian secretary had changed the spelling of ‘Jane Austen’ in one of my missives to ‘Jane Austin’ and felt she had done me a great favour! Had I not been in the habit of meticulously checking drafts of my writing, I would not have noticed this and, while the error wouldn’t have got me killed, it would have made me a laughing-stock in certain circles.

Perhaps Kuang would have benefitted from keeping the novel shorter. There is an uneven nature to the work that might have been more excusable were she a less experienced novelist. For instance, the almost obsessive focus on conundrums of logic and magical pentagrams begins to grate on the nerves halfway through the book and, while the earlier levels of Hell such as Pride and Desire are painstakingly described, Tyranny barely makes a blip on the plot’s radar.

Alice, who appears to be an alter ego of Kuang herself (both are Westernised but have Chinese origins), is earnest and dedicated but also rather self-indulgent. After a while, Kuang seems less interested in refining a good adventure story and more invested in getting us to sympathise with how much Alice has been through.

Given that the author holds academic degrees from Georgetown, Oxford and Cambridge and is currently at Yale, perhaps one can understand that her creative vision is somewhat shackled by her personal academic experiences. However, the best and most visionary novels of the fantasy genre are never self-indulgent. Had that been the case with Frank Herbert’s Dune, it would never have won the Hugo and the Nebula awards.

I disagree with Olivie Blake’s marketing blurb that states Katabasis is destined to be a modern classic. Something that reads like a young-adult novel masquerading as a book for older adults, and which is part JK Rowling and part Dorothy Sayers in terms of literary flavour, requires more than good marketing in order to withstand the test of time. Depicting the heroine feeding desperately on a hapless cat’s viscera does not connote genius, and it takes a clear-headed mind to point out that, in this novel’s case, the emperor, while not precisely naked, is hardly looking resplendent.

However, there is no doubt in my mind that the book is entertaining, well-written, worth a read if one has time to spare, and helps to underscore that one doesn’t need to be white in order to be taken seriously by those who are. Katabasis’ implicit agenda, therefore, is political not literary. But given the freedom that creativity confers on all authors, great or small, Kuang need hardly be faulted for this.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, May 3rd, 2026

The library’s management posted an appeal for funds on Tuesday, announcing that they would be shutting down as a hike in rent had made running the venue unaffordable and that they needed Rs500,000 for relocation.

On Friday, three days after the appeal went live, they announced they had met their funding goal in under an hour after people, believing in the citizen-run initiative’s vision, rallied to its cause.

“Karachi… you did it,” the announcement read, “We posted the first call for funds in the midst of planning our sabbatical, but you guys stopped us in our tracks. We met the fundraising goal in 53 MINUTES, and in three days, you TRIPLED it.”

The management said donations came through across multiple local channels as well as foreign contributions on Venmo and Zelle. Individual contributions ranged from Rs500 to $1,350 (over Rs370,000).

Their current premises appear to also have been saved by the intervention of an unnamed supporter and negotiations are underway to keep Kitab Ghar operating at its present location for another 11 months.

The library’s administration said they intend to relocate to a more affordable and sustainable venue, but this will allow for a smoother transition with minimal disruptions.

Kitab Ghar will be hosting celebratory events which will “help keep the lights on”, and organisers have asked the community to stay tuned for further announcements on their social media accounts.

For now though, this story has a happy ending and the library’s team is grateful to the community behind it. “Thank you for saving Kitab Ghar,” their announcement read. “It’s an honour to serve every one of you.”

In an Instagram post, the management of the venue in PECHS said recent gentrification of the area around the citizen-run public library had led to an increase in rent, which they could no longer afford to pay.

They said they knew what the place meant to their patrons and the community that had formed around it, and that they “do not deliver this news lightly”. They said they had provided the city with a place to “love”, “laugh”, “make art”, “congregate” and “be political” for 18 months and would have loved to continue doing so were they not “being forced to shut down”.

“If you need a Kitab Ghar near you, trust us when we tell you that we need you more,” the management said and that, while they planned to relocate to a new spot and continue serving the city, they couldn’t afford to do so yet.

To that end, they said they had set up a fundraiser with a goal of collecting Rs500,000 to be put towards finding and setting up the next Kitab Ghar Karachi. “We exist because you do,” the library’s team said. “Wherever you are, if you believe in the Kitab Ghar mission, please donate.”

Kitab Ghar is free for people to visit and use as a study and social space, with some events being ticketed. The bulk of their funding comes from monthly donation pledges and one-time contributions by patrons.

The management thanked their “comrades, patrons, and regulars” for “walking with us in our justaju [struggle] for something better”.

Her latest novelistic endeavour, Boleyn Traitor, focuses on the life of Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, who was married to Anne’s brother George. Jane was suspected of having betrayed both siblings, who ended up losing their heads due to the wrath of Henry VIII. One of the most educated women in Tudor England, thanks to the encouragement of her learned father, Lord Morley, Jane used her skills and wits in order to survive in an increasingly unstable royal court.

Gregory situates the action of her novel during the eight-year period from 1534 to 1542, which saw the beheading of Anne Boleyn, the death of Jane Seymour, the annulment of Anne of Cleves’ marriage to King Henry, and the execution — for committing adultery — of the young Queen Katherine, who was originally a scion of the powerful Howard family.

Jane had also served as one of Katherine of Aragon’s ladies, so her remarkable stint at court involved service, in total, to no fewer than five royal queens. Gregory presents a sympathetic portrayal of Viscountess Rochford, implying that it would have done her no good to attempt to defend her husband and Anne from the charges of incest. One message that clearly emerges from Gregory’s writing is that Henry VIII pulled no punches when it came to casting aside anything that got in the way of his capricious desires. He went from being a spoiled prince to becoming a tyrannical king.

Jane’s own downfall lay in the fact that she was not only sympathetic to Katherine Howard’s passion for the young and handsome courtier Thomas Culpeper, but she actually aided and abetted their courtship. However, given that Henry was a very ill and deranged individual by that point, Viscountess Rochford was by no means the only person at court to sympathise with Katheryn Howard’s predicament and desperation.

Nevertheless, in spite of her considerable political expertise, Jane Boleyn ended up pushing her luck too far in this case. So incensed was Henry at her role in the affair that he passed a special act through parliament that allowed him to execute Jane, even though his personal physician (Doctor Butts) had declared her insane and unfit to be condemned to death.

While there is most likely a whole lot more, historically speaking, to explain why Henry bounced from one wife to another with impunity, readers in general — and feminist readers in particular — will find this book to be a refreshing addition to the genre of historical fiction. In a day and age when a childless and widowed noblewoman (whose husband had been disgraced and executed) could barely make ends meet, Jane survived this traumatic period by becoming an effective spy at court for the brilliant lawyer Thomas Cromwell.

Although Cromwell had been instrumental in engineering the downfall of Anne Boleyn, he acted in Henry’s best interests by allying England with the Protestant powers of Germany, by encouraging the king to marry Anne of Cleves (following the death of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour).

Whimsical, egotistical and capricious, however, Henry didn’t care for the sensible German princess. She may have ended up suffering the same fate as Anne Boleyn had Viscountess Rochford not urged Anne of Cleves (at the instigation, and with the cooperation, of Cromwell) to accept an annulment of her marriage, along with the gift of a couple of rich palaces and an extensive staff of 8,000 noblemen and ladies.

Jane Boleyn was, in many ways, the ideal courtier. Superbly discreet, sympathetic, sensible and never easily ruffled, she did her best to serve her female bosses as honourably as possible without ruffling the feathers of the increasingly unstable Henry. Her closest relationship was with Thomas Cromwell, in that (although it was never sexualised) their friendship was a liaison of well-matched minds.

Jane held a low opinion of her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk; this was somewhat justified since he was a selfish and self-serving man, unlike Cromwell, who generally had the nation’s best interests at heart. Most of the other male figures in the novel do not shine in contrast to Jane, probably because Philippa Gregory wanted to create a shrewd and experienced central character in this book, who — had it not been for her gender — might theoretically have risen to a much higher post than that of a lady-in-waiting.

But part of Jane Boleyn’s survival skills was her ability to make the most of what she had, and to play the cards that she was dealt by fate to the best of her ability. Although able to mask her true feelings at court on a regular basis, her grief at Katherine of Aragon’s death, as well as at Thomas Cromwell’s, was sincere.

She prevented Anne of Cleves from losing her head and managed to run each queen’s household with ostensible propriety, efficiency, and a strong sense of diligence. She did not allow herself to be embroiled in a second marriage, which would have left her at the mercy of some nobleman’s moods and whims.

Instead, thanks to Cromwell’s assistance, she managed to obtain for herself the residence of Blickling Hall, along with a regular monetary allowance at court. Had Katherine Howard been a less foolish woman, Jane herself might have outlived Henry VIII (who died shortly after he married his sixth wife, Kathryn/Katherine Parr).

But as the grim, senseless and sordid execution of an old woman like Margaret Pole proved, Henry was not above executing anyone whom he perceived to be a threat, even if they had previously served the royal family well. Margaret had been the king’s late mother’s best friend, but that did not prevent Henry from tossing the old lady into the Tower of London, and then getting rid of her permanently when it suited his purpose.

Perhaps Jane’s ultimate victory lay in the manner in which she lived her life. Given the dangers prevalent and rampant in the treacherous Tudor court, her rapid imprisonment and death were simply a matter of time. But even if one’s luck may eventually run out, the legacy of one’s name may live on through the ages.

Five centuries after her demise, Jane Boleyn is regarded not as a traitor but as someone who, in our world, would have merited the compliment of being called a consummate professional.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 5th, 2026

The shortlisted books span across time and space, from a Mandarin novel set in 1930s Taiwan to suburban France in the 1990s. Two of the books are debut novels, while two the author/translator pairs have previously been nominated for the prize.

Across the books, there is a consistent theme of control. In some way or another, all six titles follow characters as they struggle with forces more powerful than themselves and face some sort of curtailment of their freedom.

The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran

The polyphonic German novel written by Shida Bazyar and translated by Ruth Martin follows two generations of an Iranian family as they live their lives, at home and in exile, through some of the most turbulent moments in the country’s history.

In a statement to the award’s organisers, Bazyar explained, “The main thing I wanted was to understand my parents’ story. The book isn’t autobiographical, but I spent many hours interviewing my parents for research, to find out what their political life was like in Iran, what their resistance looked like, and how they ended up fleeing to Germany, where I was born.”

She Who Remains

She Who Remains, the debut novel from Bulgarian novelist Rene Karabash and translated by Izidora Angel, is set in a remote Albanian village, closed off to the outside world and governed by ancient customs. When forced to marry against her will, she becomes a sworn virgin and a series of chaotic mishappenings drive her away from everyone she loves.

Karabash said she had known she wanted to write this story for a long time but couldn’t pin down its characters until she was at a photo exhibition on Albania’s sworn virgins. She said she spent two years researching the group and then wrote the book in two months.

The Director

Set in Nazi Germany, Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, translated by Ross Benjamin, is the pair’s second nomination for an International Booker Prize. The book follows a fictionalised account of the life of acclaimed German film director GW Pabst. A dissident in exile, he returns to Austria — formally part of Germany after the Anschluss in 1938 — when his mother falls ill and slowly gets pulled into the German propaganda machine.

Kehlmann said using Pabst as the main character allowed him “an entrance into a dictatorship from the angle of someone returning from ‘a free country’ and learning the rules as he goes”.

On Earth As It Is Beneath

Set in the depths of a Brazilian penal colony, On Earth As It Is Beneath is written by Ana Paula Maia and translated by Padma Vishvanathan. The 100-page read packs a deep, dark punch, with themes of slavery, torture and a perversion of justice.

Talking about her journey researching and writing the book, Maia said, “The more I reflected on the prison system in Brazil and other parts of the world, the more I realised that beyond the application of laws to criminals, in the end, we are all imprisoned in this world, with walls that may or may not be visible.”

The Witch

Marie NDiaye’s The Witch — translated from French by Jordan Stump — follows…a witch. Well, a woman with supernatural powers who nonetheless lives an ordinary life, in an unremarkable French town, dealing with her unhappy marriage. She does pass her magical gifts on to her daughters though and they surpass her strength and sorcery ability. Much like Kehlmann and Benjamin, this is NDiaye and Stump’s second nomination.

The author said she wanted to redefine the term ‘witch’ with her book, bring it back into the public discourse. That’s why she said she created a “contemporary witch: not very confident in her gift, even a little ashamed of it, and not particularly successful in passing it down to her daughters, who, modern teenagers that they are, don’t believe in it.”

Taiwan Travelogue

The last book on the shortlist, Yáng Shuāng-zi and Lin King’s Taiwan Travelogue follows a culinary writer on a trip through Japanese-occupied Taiwan. The book is written as the translation of a fictional memoir and has won Taiwan’s highest literary honour.

Shuāng-zi said the book was an exploration of the island’s complex history with colonialism, where Japanese occupation is not viewed as harshly as it is in South Korea. She also joked, “Research for the novel’s central themes of travel and food changed my life in two obvious ways: my savings went down; my weight went up.”

Cover photo: India Hobson for Booker Prize Foundation

In Rebel English Academy, Mohammed Hanif opens up the charged space between fact and rumour, showing how, in Pakistan, political gossip is never just talk. Set in the days following Bhutto’s execution, the novel unfolds in the fictional OK Town, where grief, denial and opportunism mingle in the air, and whispers travel quickly — from tea stalls to offices, from mosque loudspeakers to private bedrooms.

Soldiers, clerics and ordinary citizens alike find themselves unsettled by the slogan “Bhutto Lives”. Hanif understands something we continue to witness today: power may control events, but it rarely controls the story that follows.

It is through people, not slogans, that this tension becomes visible. Hanif explores three lives that reflect different responses to power. The first is Sir Baghi, who embodies the exhaustion of failed rebellion. Once a fiery revolutionary who paid for his rhetoric with torture, he now runs a modest English academy in a mosque’s compound. The academy of the novel’s title is less a school than a scaled-down revolution, a space where rebellion survives in language when it can no longer survive in politics; here, Baghi’s revolution narrows into grammar lessons and small, stubborn principles, a form of survival that may still afford him some dignity.

In contrast, Captain Gul represents a different kind of survival. Young, ambitious and slightly ridiculous, he works for the Field Intelligence Unit and dreams of becoming a legend whispered about in foreign capitals. Instead, he is posted to OK Town, where he must deal with slogans claiming “Bhutto Lives.” He is ordered to “make him go away” again, as if rumour requires a second burial. His bravado masks insecurity. He is loyal to the state but unsettled by how easily a whisper can undermine it.

Between these two men stands Sabiha Bano, who refuses both nostalgia and obedience. Once Baghi’s student and the daughter of a labour union leader, she re-enters his life carrying a pistol and difficult questions. Her essay Our Cow begins as a school exercise and turns into a charged memory of comrades, fire and impending violence. When she confronts Baghi and asks whether he is still the rebel people claim he was, she exposes the gap between his past and present. Sabiha is not content with nostalgia. She is impatient with compromise.

It is in the friction between these three lives that the novel’s argument takes shape. Hanif does not linger on them merely for colour or subplot; each becomes a way of thinking about power. Through Baghi, we see what happens to rebellion when it survives but does not win. Through Gul, we see how authority performs strength while remaining anxious about legitimacy. Through Sabiha, we see the cost of inheriting both failure and force. Their stories are not digressions from the political moment, but its most intimate expression.

However, as the narrative expands in different directions, its momentum is occasionally unsettled by frequent shifts in perspectives and the sheer sprawl of voices and episodes. The narrative moves from Captain Gul’s cantonment theatrics to Baghi’s bruised introspection, from Sabiha’s essays to the spectacle of the alleged rumour-spreader’s burning.

In a town gripped by rumours and fear after the hanging of an ex-prime minister, stories do not unfold neatly. They collide, overlap and burn out mid-sentence. The fragmentation reflects a society where no life is allowed a single, uninterrupted narrative.

Hanif writes in a brisk, controlled style that carries the sharpness of his journalism. His sentences move quickly, often driven by dialogue that feels lived-in and unfiltered. He has a keen ear for how people in power speak, how rumours sound in a bazaar and how piety and paranoia share the same vocabulary. At times, this journalistic edge turns the novel into something close to public commentary. The satire bites harder than the sentiment lingers, giving the book its urgency and political clarity.

To write about a leader who was executed decades ago is not, in Hanif’s hands, an act of nostalgia. It is a way of asking why that moment still feels unfinished. The novel does not appear stuck in the past so much as alert to how often Pakistan returns to it and how the same tensions between elected power and uniformed authority resurface under new names and new slogans. Bhutto becomes less a historical figure and more a recurring argument.

The strong presence of Captain Gul underscores how deeply institutional power continues to shape civilian life. If there is an allegory here, it is not about one man’s authoritarian streak but about a cycle in which charisma, populism and control blur into one another.

Hanif suggests that, unless the balance between civilian rule and state authority is resolved, history will not simply echo but repeat itself. In that sense, Rebel English Academy reads less like a backwards glance and more like a warning about cycles we have yet to break.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 15th, 2026

Deighton’s thick-bespectacled agent provided an antidote to the debonair naval officer James Bond created by Ian Fleming. The character’s rough edges also set him apart from gentleman spy George Smiley featured in books by John Le Carre.

Deighton’s spy was anonymous in his first book, The Ipcress File (1962), and its sequels Horse Under Water (1963), Funeral in Berlin (1964) and Billion-Dollar Brain (1966). But the anti-hero was baptised Harry Palmer for the hugely successful film version of the Ipcress File starring Caine, which brought Deighton to a wider audience.

Deighton, who like his spy also wore thick spectacles, lived life out of the limelight, rarely giving interviews.

Yet he sold millions of books in the English-speaking world and was translated into 20 languages over a career spanning half a century.

Originally published in Dawn, March 18th, 2026

Cover photo: AFP

In the speech, which was published by Zeteo on Thursday, Roy said while the gathering was focused on her book, she couldn’t “end the day without talking about those beautiful cities — Tehran, Isfahan, and Beirut — that are up in flames.” She said she’d like to use some of “my Mother Mary’s spirit of candour and impoliteness” to talk about “the unprovoked and illegal attack by the United States and Israel on Iran”.

The author referred to the bombing campaign in Iran as a “a continuation of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza,” but contended that “Iran is not Gaza”.

She said the world stands on the precipice of “nuclear calamity and economic collapse” as “the same country that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be readying itself to bomb one of the most ancient civilisations in the world”. Any regime change, she said, needs to come from the people and “not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission”.

Roy said Iran was standing up to the imperialists “while India cowers”, adding that she was ashamed of how “gutless” and “spineless” the Indian government was in dealing with Israel and the US. She lamented that her country had lost its pride and dignity, “except in our movies”. “Let me simply say that I stand with Iran. Unequivocally,” the author said

She decried Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Israel and his government’s trade relations with the US, questioning what it means for India to get the country’s “permission” to buy oil from Russia.

She also called out the Indian government for sending Indian workers to Israel to replace expelled Palestinians, adding that these workers were reportedly not allowed to use air raid shelters during Iran’s retaliatory fire on Israeli cities.

“Who has put us into this absolutely humiliating, shameless, disgusting place in the world?” Roy asked.

The author said the term “running dogs of imperialists” — used by Chinese politician Mao Zedong to describe allies of Imperialist powers — “describes [India] well. Except, of course, in our twisted, toxic movies in which our celluloid heroes strut on, winning phantom war after war, dumb and over-muscled. Fuelling our insatiable bloodlust with their gratuitous violence.”

Roy is no stranger to taking strong and vocal stances on issues she cares about, she recently made headlines for pulling out of the Berlin International Film Festival over the president of the festival’s jury saying cinema should “stay out of politics” when asked about Gaza. Earlier, she signed a pledge not to work with Israeli cultural institutions over complicity in the state’s war on Gaza.

Her writing is also considered seditious by the Indian government, which banned her 2020 book Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction in India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir for “propagating false narrative and secessionism”.

Cover photo: Arundhati Roy/Facebook

Zaher’s unnamed narrator is Palestinian, lives in New York, and has impeccable taste and meticulous hygiene. She is wealthy but has limited access to her wealth. Her homeland exists exceedingly in her imagination, as she struggles to thrive in America.

She is also a teacher working at a school for underprivileged boys. It is here that she feels the most in control. Her unconventional teaching methods resonate with the seventh graders, who feel their voices matter most within the four walls of their classroom.

Throughout the book, there is a symbiotic relationship between the narrator and her students — “They were on the margins, and I understand the drive to reclaim American democracy for all, but I think it’s an afterthought.” She is acutely aware of their circumstances and looks beyond their shortcomings, focusing on their intellect and strengths that might not be visible at first glance, but which are still there.

In turn, the students provide her a semblance of control and stability that she struggles for outside the classroom. They value her presence in their lives and provide meaning to her daily routine. For me, this was one of the most endearing parts of this book.

The Coin reads at a frenetic pace. Like a kaleidoscope, it flits between the various aspects of the narrator’s identity, going back and forth as she grapples with transactional relationships outside of her work. She finds herself searching for something throughout the book. As a reader, you can’t place your finger on it. Neither can she. This is the strength of Zaher’s writing; she keeps her reader at par with the narrator, so we go through the motions with her.

She is a Palestinian living in New York, trying to reconcile the fractures that exist within her identity. Zaher writes, “I used to think that if people saw the real face of wickedness, not the mask, they would revolt… When Netanyahu and Trump were elected, I thought those were good days, because the truth had come to light. But it seemed not only that the truth was ugly, but also that ugly was beautiful. The people adore the monster, the rich want to look poor.”

It is here you realise that, perhaps, what the narrator is looking for in her relationships and daily interactions is a sense of homeland. In a deeply profound way, Zaher highlights how important it is to have a strong sense of identity and belonging. The narrator finds making connections a tedious business, even though she tries her best; eventually, every relationship she has reaches a point where her need to belong remains unfulfilled.

The Coin is a study in resistance. One of the most defining features of Zaher’s protagonist is her militant obsession with hygiene, which stems from a childhood trauma when she accidentally swallowed a shekel that she believes is still lodged somewhere in her body. This fixation on an internal impurity is what drives her to scrub, sanitise and control her external world with a ferocity that contributes to alienating her from those around her.

This struggle for bodily autonomy also puts her at odds with the society that she is a part of. Despite her wealth and expensive taste, she remains an outsider as a stateless Palestinian in America. Her involvement in a Birkin bag pyramid scheme further isolates her. Her rebellion is complex and sheds light on rampant American consumerism and casual racism.

Zaher’s writing is witty, chaotic and stylish, as it compels the reader to be pulled into the narrator’s increasingly unhinged stream of consciousness. The reasons for her bizarre behaviour slowly become easier to understand as you become privy to her every thought and justification.

In the landscape of contemporary writing, Zaher’s novel will remind the reader of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, in which the protagonist asserts herself through a singular obsessive act that becomes an external manifestation of rebellion against societal norms that seek to imprison her. Both Yasmin Zaher and Han Kang explore the harrowing consequences of seeking absolute control over one’s own body in societies that demand conformity, arriving at a similar chilling conclusion: that the struggle for autonomy in a repressive world can lead to alienation from the self and society.

Zaher has a profound control over language. She writes with devastating certainty: “Maybe pretence was all there was. Fashion is pretence, education is pretence, personality, too, is a form of internalised pretence. I wondered what my true essence would be if I were solitary, in nature, untamed and unconditioned.”

The Coin is a novel that Yasmin Zaher identifies with complexities that lie at the heart of identity politics and the struggle to reclaim oneself. Zaher’s use of tightly controlled yet vivid imagery allows an exploration into themes of privilege, suffering and statelessness. There is no excessive moralising or conclusion, while the novel traces the unravelling of Zaher’s protagonist.

Yasmin Zaher’s writing is intimate and focuses on the sensory nature and physicality of language to convey her narrator’s escalating obsession. The Coin will stay with the reader, for better or for worse, much like life. It is an amalgamation of chaos and calm, where a lot happens over the course of time, but, at the same time, nothing happens at all.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, March 1st, 2026

Eos presents, with permission, excerpts from Rebel English Academy, published recently by Maktaba-i-Danyal in Pakistan.

On the night of the hanging

Every thing is as calm and orderly as it should be in a jail devoted to the safety and care of one very important man. All prisoners but one are asleep in their cells, restless, dreaming of their victims or their loved ones, which in most cases are the same people.

The Rawalpindi sky is clear and full of stars; all the talk about omens is rubbish: there are no meteor showers, no storms brewing on the horizon, the sky is not going to shed tears of blood, the earth is not about to split open and swallow its wretched inhabitants and their grief.

The man who is awake has asked for a safety razor, claiming that he doesn’t want to look like a mullah in death. After consultations with superiors, the jail superintendent has sent for a barber, who shaves the man gently, making sure to clear the fuzz from his earlobes. The man asks for a cigar and the jail superintendent doesn’t need to ask for his superiors’ permission. No man who is about to be hanged in three hours and forty-five minutes has ever tried to kill himself with a Montecristo.

The jailer makes sure to light it himself; the man chews on his cigar, takes two deep puffs and regrets it, thinking maybe he should have quit when he had the time. The man asks for his Shalimar perfume, sprays himself and lies down on the floor. A mosquito buzzes near his ear. On any other night he might have called in the jailer and given him a dressing-down for infesting his prison cell with poisonous insects, might have accused him of being a tool of the White Elephant, his favourite invective for the United States of America, but tonight he just shoos the mosquito away half-heartedly, listening to the rising and fading whirr of its wings. He is grateful for the company.

Everyone agrees on the above events. Those who wanted to hang him, those who wanted to save him, those who wanted a martyr in the early morning whose blood could help them bring about a revolution, even those who were indifferent, all agree up to this point that the man lay down on the floor, pulled a sheet over himself and stayed still, dress-rehearsing being dead.

Although everything was still and orderly in and around the cell where an about-to-be hanged man practised his death pose, there was activity, quite a lot of activity, around the country in some crucial spots. Many would later say, especially journalists and diplomats who made a living out of exaggeration, that it was the longest night of their lives, that they knew something historic, something catastrophic was about to happen. But only those who had been woken up without warning with a degree of rudeness would remember this night when their own time came.

An imam was hauled up from his small room adjacent to his small mosque and ordered to get ready to lead the funeral prayers of a very important man. One of the world’s sturdiest planes, a C-130, was on standby at Rawalpindi air base to ferry the body to the man’s village. A military truck followed by six machine-gun-mounted jeeps made its way towards the airport, with some sleepy, some alert soldiers, their commander wondering why a dead man needed so much protection. Elites stay elite even in their death, he thought.

Some soldiers sang a tea jingle: “Chai chahyie, kaunsi janab.”

“Shut up,” barked the commander. “We are on VIP duty.”

A caretaker at the village graveyard was asked to start digging a grave, and when he asked what size, he was slapped. “Your own size,” he was told.

Above are the facts that everyone agrees upon. As with every hanging, there are differing accounts about the man’s walk to the gallows. How did he walk? Some say he never actually walked. That he collapsed on the shoulders of his jail guards and had to be carried. His jiyalas say that he walked on steady feet, head held high, climbed onto the podium as if addressing the nation one last time, kissed the noose and put it around his neck.

Others say he was carried on a stretcher and two policemen, themselves shaking at the gravity of the moment, had to prop him up by his armpits before fitting the rope around his neck. You can’t hang a man when he is horizontal on a stretcher.

There was one oversight by the jail superintendent, but that was taken care of by the ingenuity of a captain who happened to be on the scene on a top-secret mission. After discovering that the jail administration had forgotten to order a coffin, the captain barged into the jail armoury, looked around, saw a body-sized wooden crate that was used to store the jail guards’ rusting guns, shouted at them for not having any respect for their weapons and handed the crate over to the jailer who, in gratitude, leapt forward to kiss his hands.

The captain put his hands behind his back and reminded him that he was on post-hanging photo-shoot duty and would like a few private moments with the body after the man was hanged. The jailer agreed, knowing he had no choice in the matter, and asked the captain if he would like to witness the hanging. The captain declined the offer, saying he wasn’t on hanging duty.

He was here on a different mission.

Before being taken to the waiting cargo plane, the hanged man was left alone in the jail superintendent’s office for a few minutes with the captain, who had brought a professional photographer with him. In those few minutes, the photographer had to perform the most shameless, and as these things go hand in hand, the most high-powered assignment of his otherwise mediocre career.

He pulled down the hanged man’s soiled shalwar and, with the flash on, took half a dozen photos of his genitalia. It was done in the forlorn hope of confirming the persistent rumour that the hanged man was not circumcised and hence a Hindu. The very fact that photos were never processed or released was proof enough that the man was indeed circumcised and hence a Muslim.

The man himself might have argued forcefully that the one didn’t prove the other, that many Muslims in his hometown never bothered to circumcise their children. But this little episode ended when the captain made a phone call and reported that the bastard was dead and circumcised. There was a sigh on the other end of the phone. The director of Field Intelligence Unit’s internal security said that the bastard was lying and cheating even in his death. “And you, Captain, you had one job. What are we going to do with you?” said the director and put the phone back on its cradle with historic disappointment.

The nation was thus spared the indignity of waking up to newspapers with pictures of a hanged man’s genitalia on the front pages.

The captain was punished with a transfer to a town where car number plates started with the letters OK and where people from far-off districts came to get their vehicles registered. The captain had done a brief stint in OK town cantonment after getting his commission three and a half years ago and knew that the vehicle registration plates were the only exciting thing about the city. He knew he would need to create his own entertainment and come up with a mission to shine on this punishment posting.

Three nights after the hanging, when our captain, let’s call him Captain Gul, is inspecting his room in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters and testing the strength of his bed, all the while looking at himself in the dressing table’s smudged mirror, admiring a hint of a cleft in his chin, his wild sideburns and lush black moustache, a few miles away there is a knock on the door of the Rebel English Academy which, despite its misleading name, is a law-abiding and affordable tuition centre for basic English. Its founder and sole teacher, Sir Baghi, is about to receive a young lady guest he is not expecting at all.

Allah’s will

Molly Rafique must have planned it this way, although he would insist forever that it was all Allah’s will. When Molly sneaks his young lady friend into the academy, Sir Baghi is finally enjoying an afternoon of solitude.

He had sent his students home the moment they heard a newspaper hawker shouting in the street about the hanging. Baghi knows that it will be a very long weekend. He wants to use this unexpected holiday to mark papers, review his syllabus and read the fourth chapter of To the Lighthouse.

He also plans a visit to Venus cinema for a matinee in the hope of finding some random afternoon love. It’s not in his nature to be optimistic but he is hoping that the cinema won’t be shut down.

Molly’s lady friend carries a faded sea-green sports bag, with the logo of a panther in the middle of a leap, ‘Pride of OK Town’ inscribed under the panther in fading gold letters. She is wearing baggy tracksuit bottoms, a white dupatta embroidered with white and yellow nargis flowers loosely draped around her neck, a girl old enough to know that she needs a dupatta but young enough not to know what to do with it. She has the air of somebody about to take a leap and start running, somebody who is being chased by their own past or, at least, what they hope is their past.

Molly is sweating, his forehead a network of the entire world’s troubles. A sheen of sweat covers his shaved upper lip, his famous beard quivering. “Can you look after my guest while I do the funeral prayers?”

Funeral prayers? Baghi groans, the veins in his neck bulge because of the unspoken words. He always buttons up his always-black shirt’s collar, less a sartorial choice and more an attempt to hide a crimson hammer and sickle tattoo on his upper chest. Baghi is past his shouting days but he still gets the occasional urge.

He knows the mosque is Molly’s business but why does Molly want to have a funeral in absentia for a man hanged two hundred miles away and buried in his village in the dead of the night three days ago? A man who was clearly a feudal despot in the clothes of an awami pseudo-socialist, bald and squeaky and certain of his own immortality, the type of man who, from his death cell, writes a threatening pamphlet titled ‘If I Am Assassinated’ … and is assassinated anyway, someone who says you can kill a man but you can’t kill an idea. Baghi wants to tell Molly you can’t have a funeral in absentia for an idea. But the mosque is Molly’s business.

On another day he might have said, Molly, surely you don’t want to start a socialist revolution in your mosque? Better not to start it anywhere — look at me.

“What can I do? The bazaar is full of jiyalas and they want a funeral. I know he wasn’t very nice to you but he is gone to Allah now, where we all must go one day, and we must honour the dead,” says Molly, moving towards the door.

Yes, we must honour the dead, Baghi wants to say, even if the dead once had a chilli-powder-laced rod rammed up my ass for writing a letter.

Baghi also wants to say that this is a teaching institution and not a resting place for girls with hurriedly packed sports bags but, before he can say it, Molly is gone, leaving behind the smell of his favourite ittar, a confused mixture of rose and jasmine, and his guest with large, searching eyes, scanning the place for something familiar.

She puts down her bag, moves towards Baghi and holds out her hand. Baghi observes her hand, hesitates before taking it. When was the last time he had shaken hands with a woman? This was not the kind of town where people shook hands with women, not the kind of neighbourhood where people left single women in bachelors’ quarters to be entertained. Her handshake is determined and it forces him to look her in the face.

Ruin, he thinks, she is going to ruin us.

In five years of teaching English to sons and daughters of peasants and shopkeepers, Baghi has developed a revolutionary technique: single words spring up to describe a moment in life. In order to teach these students, you didn’t need proper sentences. Verbs and nouns and adjectives and qualifying adverbs could wait. Usually, a word was enough to describe a given situation, an intention or, in this case, a sense of impending doom.

Baghi rarely gets to say that he was right because it has been proven, often enough, from matters of politics to affairs of the heart, that he was almost always wrong. Later it would turn out that he was right in this moment when he forgets all the flourishes of a successful English tutor and a closet revolutionary, looks at her and comes up with the perfect word: ruin.

Baghi doesn’t much care for the native language tradition which has evolved many ways of describing a face, especially a woman’s face — in fact, most of classical poetry was devoted to capturing a woman’s features. Snakes and wine goblets featured prominently. You looked for wine goblets in the eyes, poisonous vipers in the hair, and the face was always book-like. To Baghi’s enduring irritation, nobody ever said which book, a slim T.S. Eliot volume or a copy of the Original and the Biggest Heer. The English language, Baghi believed, was more accommodating, more precise, yet more expansive.

You could do away with wine goblets and coiling, hissing snakes; you could just say her nose was sharp and quivered gently when she breathed, a little dimple on the left cheek, which still had baby fat, set off a mole on the right cheek. If he was into women, he would say she could probably set anybody’s bed on fire and turn their life to ashes by loving them and then abandoning them to waste away their life writing below-average poetry, invoking as many snakes and broken goblets as they pleased.

Baghi had wanted to do many things in life: bring a violent revolution, make the rich suffer, give all the peasants’ children a world-class education. But right now he was content doing small courtesies; he was going to ask his lady guest to have a seat and politely inquire if they had met in a past life.

But before he can say it, she plonks her bag on the floor and takes a seat. He offers her tea, he offers her water. She refuses with a wave of her hand and sits on the chair; she looks towards the ceiling, the bookshelf, the blackboard, then speaks suddenly, and while native poets may have heard a koel cooing, Baghi only hears a dry-throated, husky voice which some men with unresolved sexual urges might find desirable, a voice defeated but refusing to surrender, the voice of someone ready to get up and go looking for a fight again.

“Do you often entertain his friends?” The question sounds like an accusation to Baghi.

“No,” Baghi says. “Not like this.” He fingers his buttoned-up collar, stutters and finds himself defending his friend and landlord Maulvi Rafique’s character, not that his character needs defending: he is a man of God, a rising star of the spiritual marketplace; people offer him mutton qorma and cash in advance to listen to him telling them how to live their lives and how to prepare for the afterlife.

She is waiting, still looking at him, as if urging him to explain his life as the entertainer of stray women.

“I mean, sometimes we have friends over, common friends, and we talk, but if you are asking if he has brought a woman to my academy, I would have to say no. This is an institution of learning and not a…”

She is not listening to him any more. She is the kind of woman who tunes out when a man starts to bullshit. That’s one of the many reasons on Baghi’s list for staying away from women.

“I didn’t know he was the Bhutto type,” she says.

“Not a good day to be his jiyala,” Baghi says.

“There never was a good day to be a jiyala,” she says, looking up at him, expecting him to say more.

“He’s a maulvi, offering prayers for the dead is his job.” Baghi shrugs.

Baghi doesn’t like to talk politics with women… He has learnt his lesson and likes to keep his affairs away from female comrades.

“Can I get you something cold or maybe a hot drink?”

Repeating oneself is the essence of life. When he tells this to his students, he attributes it to Virginia Woolf but he is not sure if she ever said it. That is under the category of Things Virginia Woolf Might Have Said, an evolving list in his teaching career. The bourgeois comrade who caught him in the study circle also accused him of never having read a word written by a woman. Baghi is trying to prove her wrong.

“Water,” his guest says.

Baghi takes out one of the two glasses he keeps aside for guests. Students drink from plastic tumblers — no casteism in this academy, no hierarchies, but they are young and careless and Baghi has no patience for glass shards in the feet and blood on the floor. She accepts it without a word, gulps it down in one go.

“And how do you know Maulvi sahib?” He is deferential and doesn’t call him Molly in his absence as he has called him to his face since they were children… Molly used to bristle when he started calling him Molly but Baghi could tell that he secretly enjoyed it. He was his Molly boy before he became a serious scholar of religion who accepted cash only for his sermons and refused to eat farm-bred chicken and knew people who could spring you from a police dungeon.

She looks at Baghi as if trying to decide if she should lie to him or just slap him. “I pray behind him. This is the only mosque where women can pray but you wouldn’t know because you don’t believe in God.” Baghi is startled. He doesn’t believe in God but over the years he has learnt to keep his non-faith to himself and his academy students. She has probably heard it from Molly.

“He’s a friend, more like an elder brother to me. There was a fire at my house so he offered to put me up, temporarily,” she says and watches him for a reaction.

Molly has friends? Baghi knows that he has followers, many, many followers, worshippers who prostrate behind him feverishly, broken people trying to put themselves back together, repentant paedophiles, proud murderers, lovers, addicts, heartless traders, all flock to him for salvation. Baghi believes he is the only friend Molly has, the only one who refuses to pray behind him or anyone else. But no, Molly has another friend-sister who is here sitting in his chair, a friend with hazel eyes and roasted-wheat skin who has landed in the academy with an oversized sports bag because, obviously, Molly has no other place to take her.

Does Mrs Molly know that her much-respected husband — my god on this earth, my companion, my protector, mera sohna — has a lady friend-sister who is sitting in the same compound a few metres away?

The mosque loudspeaker turns on and Molly’s friend-sister seems surprised at the proximity of the electric crackle and the piercing sound of prayers that follows. She takes her dupatta and covers her head, probably realizing for the first time that she’s sitting in a mosque, in Allah’s own house.

“You don’t remember me?”

Baghi is blank for a moment. “Were you a student? I would have remembered.”

“Not to worry. I was here only for two weeks. I failed. Are you still a good English teacher?”

Nobody has ever asked him that. Nobody. Because they all know that he is the best there is. They might also say that teaching English is the only thing he is good at. The revolutions he had hatched lay in dust. The Mazdoor Militia he had started folded after one industrial action with two dead and even the defunct militia expelled him after his open letter to Ummah. Brief visits to police lock-ups and picnics in shabby rehabs were all in the past.

But yes, he is good at something. Something useful. Send a peasant’s son to Baghi’s Rebel English Academy, a young boy who can’t even call his own cow ‘cow’ in English, and within three months he would write a perfectly composed essay called ‘Our Cow’ that would get him passing grades in high school. Send him for another three months and he might get a job as a clerk, six months and he might pass the police recruitment exam and become an official torturer.

“I try. This is the most I can do, I just help them.” He doesn’t tell her that some of them go on to become police officers and diplomats. He is trying to be humble like you should be with a young woman you have just met. You are supposed to rub your own nose in the dust in the hope she will pick you up by the scruff of your neck and say, oh come on, don’t be humble. She has no such plans. She sits there waiting for him to pick himself up.

“Some of my students have become UN diplomats — one almost became a foreign secretary. But they were hard-working children, no credit to me.”

She has no interest in his glorious career where he grooms future UN diplomats. “I failed my English in FA,” she says as if he was personally responsible for her failure. “Second division for every subject and F for English. Zero, anda.” She makes an egg with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand. “I went to college for a year on sports quota. District gold medal in 400 yard hurdles.’”

“I am sorry to hear that,” he says. He doesn’t remember her name but it seems rude to ask her now so he continues. “I wish you had stayed longer than two weeks because the system I have devised —”

He gets an appreciative smile out of her but then she cuts him off mid-sentence. “I used to come with my friend. My friend became a doctor and she says you gave her a new life, English life. Now she lives in Norway. Maybe you should try teaching me again.”

Baghi blushes. And also panics. “Are you planning to stay?”

Excerpted with permission from English Rebel Academy by Mohammed Hanif, published in Pakistan by Maktaba-i-Danyal

Originally published in Dawn, EOS, February 22nd, 2026

While the overarching subject involves jinns and the dangers of demonic possession, each novella is distinctly different from the others. The first contains a mild-mannered male protagonist, Rahim, while the central characters of the other two are women. All three pieces of writing, however, are united in noting how the world of the jinns can impact that of humans, often with consequences that are problematic, to say the least, and downright disastrous at worst.

Rahim Shamsi is perhaps my favourite character in the book. A taciturn child, he is initially treated coldly by a domineering father and stifled by a simple, gentle mother. His mother fears that he is prone to possession by jinn influences, simply because he has an extra finger on one hand. Polydactyly is a relatively harmless condition caused by a genetic mutation, but Rahim’s relatively uneducated mother can be excused for not knowing the scientific logic underlying the existence of multiple fingers on her child’s hand.

Although Rahim is shy and withdrawn, he shows absolutely no active signs of demonic possession during his childhood or in his taxing adolescence (which takes place at a cadet college devoted to strict discipline). His father is responsible for packing him off to the aforementioned school, so that Rahim can toughen up, become more manly, and abandon his dreams of becoming a veterinarian.

One evening, Rahim and his friends exchange stories about jinns and demonic influences; this is fairly typical behaviour for young people thrown together on a stormy night. His close friend, Salman, believes that a scientific rationale underpins what many term jinn activity. This point becomes increasingly significant later in the novella.

Excelling at the study of biology, Rahim settles for becoming a dentist as opposed to a veterinarian, a decision that pleases his father, who acquires office space for him, where he can begin his clinical practice. Although Rahim works with skill and diligence, things begin to go awry quite soon.

He finds that there is ‘something not quite right’ about several of his patients. Some of them do not exhibit the bodily proportions of normal human beings, yet others have entire alternative universes within their mouths and, in a particularly jaw-dropping scene, all the family members of one of his patients drop their lower jaws to an utterly freaky extent!

My hat goes off to Rahim for remaining persistent about his career in the face of overwhelming (not to mention supernatural) odds. Rather unexpectedly, it is his hitherto cold and difficult father who comes to his help by attempting to figure out if the clinic is haunted in some tangible sense of the word. Less unexpectedly, his old school chum Salman also helps Rahim understand why he might be plagued by such unusual career hurdles.

The novella builds up its various characters admirably, and Ayesha Muzaffar is to be credited for attending to the development of both major and minor characters with an equal degree of care and skill. The novella is set in Lahore, and Muzaffar’s thorough knowledge of, and familiarity with, this historic city makes for an authentic and enjoyable backdrop.

The vibration climbed up his arms. The sweat from his brow trickled into his eyes. The cavity had no end. He changed bits. Increased speed. Switched angles. The cavity consumed it all. It was like digging into a black sun — nothing pushed back. His hands began to tremble. He glanced up once — just once — and the three of them were still staring. Still watching. Mouths dangling like broken ornaments. He nearly dropped the drill. — Excerpt from the novel

Muzaffar demonstrates even greater authorial prowess in the novella following this one, titled Finding Faraz. Also set in Lahore, although the latter part of this work is heavily reliant on supernatural themes, it is, in essence, a love story, carefully crafted by the writer.

Faraz and Farwah meet at college in Lahore, fall in love, and marry in spite of his family’s disapproval. Fate intervenes cruelly, and Faraz falls victim to a traffic accident a few years later. In a rather spooky turn of events, his body is never found, and hence Farwah receives no closure insofar as this major crisis is concerned. Although she eventually remarries and has children, she gradually becomes unhinged, imagining that she is seeing her late husband on various occasions.

Her kind but prosaic second husband, Basit, realises that something is seriously preying on Farwah’s peace of mind. Her frailty and increasing ill-health cause him to turn to religious sages and seers in order to ‘cure’ his wife. I will not spoil the story by giving away its denouement, but I can certainly state that those readers who are looking for thrills and chills related to possession by jinns will definitely not be disappointed.

My personal favourite of the three novellas, however, is the final (and shortest) one, The Possession of Bareera Khurram. In spite of the fact that this is set in Karachi, not Lahore, and is only a third of the length of the other two novellas, I don’t believe that my primary reason for liking it is because I am a Karachiite. Rather, it is its unexpected plot-twist at the end that makes it come across as a work of genius. I do not use the term ‘genius’ lightly, since it is well-established lore to assume that superior creative pieces are inspired by ‘genies’ (the word is etymologically related to ‘genius’) or ‘jinns’!

Bareera is an elite Karachi-based woman whose husband sends her to a therapist in order to help get to the root of her delusions and aberrant behaviour. Her therapist appears to be a shrewd and capable woman who is sincere about helping her patient. As the story unfolds, one finds, much to one’s horror, that the therapist is as much in danger of forces beyond her control as is Bareera herself!

By moving beyond the genre of the short story, Ayesha Muzaffar has expanded her vistas in a manner that will prove to be truly satisfying for her numerous fans. Her prose is simple and crisp, and I was impressed by how rapid and engrossing the pace of her writing was in this riveting collection of novellas. Perhaps the only criticism I can come up with is that jinns are not wholly evil beings (even the Holy Quran indicates that some are devout Muslims), and therefore the book presents a somewhat skewed perspective on these paranormal entities.

However, it is possible that Muzaffar wishes, by means of her authorial agenda, to underscore that the world of the jinns should never be taken lightly. In this, she succeeds, since her tales are nothing if not cautionary. While the book will undoubtedly delight fans of the horror genre, the sobering fact that all three of these remarkable stories are loosely based on real events will cause many readers to think twice before dabbling in the occult.

And perhaps that’s not such a bad thing, in aggregate.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 15th, 2026

No marriage is the same, just as no two people are, and the books below demonstrate the metamorphosis of marriages and their impact on the families born of them.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

“A woman’s only human… she’s flesh and blood, just like her man. No more, no less.”

An American Marriage is a novel about Roy and Celestial Hamilton, a newly married couple whose lives are torn apart after Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The story centres around how these characters navigate their relationship through difficult times whilst dealing with their own traumas and attempting to understand who they are as individuals.

Roy is a charming, middle class young man who falls in love with Celestial, an artist who comes from a wealthy family. Roy aspires to achieve the quintessential American dream — big house, beautiful family and success. The burden of class and race weigh heavily on him. Celestial, a dreamer, has a different mindset, dealing with her own past and finding her place as a successful black artist in America.

The story lays bare the agonising death of a warm and loving relationship yet also the beginnings of new and hopeful ones. Even though Celestial and Roy’s story is far from the picture perfect marriage one would hope for, it highlights that marriage is fragile, breakable and what I liked most about the story is that apart from being very relevant, the love story does not exist in a bubble or a vacuum — the characters are very much affected by society and their environment.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

“No marriage makes sense. Especially not to the outside world. A marriage is it’s own world.”

Sorrow and Bliss is about Martha, a vibrant and clever writer, and her struggle with her mental health. She has an adoring husband who has loved her since they were children. When he walks out on her, Martha is lost and wishes she was ‘normal’ like other people and wasn’t plagued by overpowering emotions.

Martha must heal and love who she is whilst accepting her circumstances. The love story is simple yet profound, delivering the everlasting message that it is impossible to love another person without loving yourself first.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

“Each memory, good and bad, was another invisible thread that bound them together… It was as simple and complicated as that.”

This is a fun, light novel about 39-year-old Alice, who, after a bad fall at the gym, loses her memory of the past 10 years. Believing she’s 29, newly married and not yet a mother, Alice’s fresh and carefree outlook towards life is something ‘older’ Alice could re-learn.

What Alice Forgot is about two people, burdened by everyday life and whose marriage is falling apart, who need to reset and re-evaluate their priorities. An eye opener for those who are stuck in the mundanity of marriage and everyday life.

This is a story about how love changes and evolves, and sometimes slips quietly into the background becoming second to everything else. Alice and Nick’s journey teaches readers about the importance of revival and the need for survival of love in a marriage.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

“What made something precious? Losing it and finding it.”

Marilyn and James Lee have their world turned upside down when their favourite child commits suicide. Everything I Never Told You is a story about grief, loss and how dysfunctional family narratives can have a deep impact on generations to come.

It is a novel about dreams unfulfilled, identities unexplored, and children misunderstood and ignored. There are no happy endings here, just moving on and reconciling with the fact that you may never know or not care enough to know how deeply lonely and unhappy a person can be.

Readers witness the tragic reality of a parent’s guilt that is neverending, which then continues to chip away at and destroy a marriage and shatter the deep bonds between family.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

“When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.”

A story about two broken people running from themselves and their traumas to find solace in each other. Cleo, 24, is a beautiful and broke artist living in Manhattan on the last few days of her student visa. She meets Frank, a successful 45-year-old while exiting a party. Sparks fly between them, and readers are drawn into a thrilling passionate romance that quickly leads to marriage so that Cleo can get her green card.

Though it is a marriage of convenience, the two are deeply and hopelessly in love and the beauty of their connection is evident. However, as the story progresses, the flaws of these two characters begin to unveil in a very raw and vulnerable manner — Frank is highly dependent on alcohol, and Cleo is battling depression.

There are secondary characters in the novel that contribute to the storyline and help Cleo and Frank on their journey of healing and love. Frank and Cleo’s story is evidence that some profound attachments are strong enough to outlast a marriage.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein is one of the best modern day love stories I have read. It hides none of the ugliness in a marriage and highlights the miseries that infect relationships today.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“Ryan and I are two people who used to be in love. What a beautiful thing to have been. What a sad thing to be.”

After I Do is about Ryan and Lauren whose marriage is falling apart. Trying to save it, they come up with a plan to spend a year apart without any contact to see if they can find their way back to each other. They realise that marriage, even though a conventional and traditional institution, cannot be dealt with using a traditional streamlined approach. Each relationship is different, and every couple must discover their own boundaries and what they want from their partner.

This was a sweet, lighthearted read with a heartwarming ending. While the other novels in the list have more volatile relationships with extreme settings, I have included this book in the list because it highlights the importance of boundaries, which are imperative for any healthy relationship to survive.

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

“Perhaps that’s what it is, this feeling never experienced before, elation, excitement, a furious kind of happiness. Perhaps this is love.”

Beth and Frank are content in their quiet life in the countryside. However, their world is disrupted when an accidental shooting brings Gabriel, Beth’s first love, back into her life. He’s a man who is the stark opposite of her gentle husband Frank, a man who challenged her, pushed her limits and loved her with abandon.

Along with Gabriel, there is his son Leo who reminds Beth of her own son whom she lost a few years earlier. The novel poignantly explores the impact of grief and the wedge it creates in a genuinely blissful union and how the intensity of an unrequited love can change the trajectory of a person’s life.

This one’s for lovers of pining romance and historical fiction.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

While all of the other books on this list have essentially positive messages and illustrate how to navigate relationships in a somewhat meaningful manner, Gone Girl is the stark opposite.

Nick and Amy Dunne are a seemingly happily married couple, until one day Amy goes missing and the police suspect foul play, making Nick the prime suspect.

The story unfolds with plenty of twists and turns and we uncover the dark and ugly side of marriage, where obsession is mistaken for love, as well as the extreme lengths a partner can go to to completely and deceptively mould themselves to fit into another’s world and hide who they truly are. With a highly dysfunctional and toxic protagonist, Gone Girl is a must read!

Set in the princely state of Hyderabad Deccan, the novel revisits a place often sidelined in mainstream narratives of the British Raj and Partition. It provides a textured, intimate portrayal of a world shaped as much by memory as by loss. Athar does not attempt spectacle; his strength lies in layering, in creating depth in his characters, in addition to language and historical awareness.

From the very first pages, it is clear that this is a novel that takes its readers seriously and asks them to pay attention to subtleties rather than grand gestures. The book opens with a note from the author that serves almost as an invitation, gently guiding the reader into the story’s geography and emotional terrain.

Hyderabad Deccan is not merely a setting in this novel. It is a living, breathing presence that shapes the people who inhabit it and the events that unfold. Once a princely state rich in terms of material wealth and cultural plurality, Hyderabad carried a distinct identity that rarely finds adequate representation in narratives of colonial India. Discussions around the British Raj and Partition often reduce history to binaries, and Hyderabad’s nuanced past is frequently overlooked. Athar’s novel resists this erasure with care and precision.

One of the most compelling aspects of this historical richness is the attention paid to language. The state’s capital Hyderabad is depicted not only as a city of wealth and political significance but also as a place with a unique linguistic and cultural identity.

Dakhani, which I had previously known only as a dialect, is presented as a fully realised language in the novel. Through dialogue and everyday interactions, the story illustrates how Dakhani carries centuries of history, memory and cultural pride. This attention to linguistic detail adds layers of authenticity, making the city feel lived-in and complex. Language in Forty Days of Mourning is not just a means of communication; it is a vessel of memory and identity.

At the centre of the story is Saleema, a protagonist who immediately challenges assumptions. Wealthy, sharp-edged and emotionally guarded, she initially comes across as snobbish, which feels deliberate and familiar, given its realism. Athar does not attempt to soften her for the reader’s comfort, and Saleema is complex and contradictory from the very beginning. Her wealth creates distance between her and those around her, but it also functions as a shield, hinting at experiences of loss, obligation and survival beneath the surface.

The novel is set during the uneasy year after the British left, when Hyderabad briefly existed as its own independent state. Life goes on, but under a constant sense of waiting, waiting for decisions, for war, for things to fall apart. Political negotiations drag on, rumours spread through streets and homes, loyalties are tested, and fear quietly seeps into everyday routines.

As pressure from the newly formed Indian state increases, Hyderabad’s fragile independence begins to crack. The story follows this slow unravelling, moving from hope and denial to violence, loss and reckoning, ending with the state’s forced integration and the collective grief of a world that disappears almost overnight.

As the wife of a high-ranking army officer, Saleema moves through the city’s elite circles, aware of every whisper of political tension, every shifting alliance. But as the Nizam’s Hyderabad faces the inevitability of annexation, Saleema realises that neither status nor cunning can fully shield her, and the choices she makes ripple through both her personal life and the crumbling world around her.

Within the first few chapters, we see Saleema interacting with her husband and her family, which complicate our initial impressions and begin to reveal emotional layers that are not immediately apparent. If these moments are insufficient to fully convince the reader of her complexity, the narrative later delves into her backstory, revealing motivations, insecurities and the personal history that informs her present behaviour.

Athar does not justify her actions, and neither does he ask the reader to excuse them. He provides context, allowing empathy to develop without demanding approval. It is a subtle yet significant distinction that demonstrates the author’s careful attention to character psychology.

Athar’s writing is another strength of the novel. The prose is measured, deliberate and restrained, never overreaching or indulgent. Scenes are allowed to unfold naturally, and silences carry as much weight as dialogue. There is a rhythm to the narrative, especially when history and memory intersect, and this makes the reading experience immersive.

Hyderabad Deccan emerges not merely as a backdrop but as a character in its own right. The streets, the buildings and the everyday life of the capital are all integrated into the story, influencing the people who live there and reflecting their histories, anxieties and desires.

The novel’s historical elements are woven into daily life rather than presented as exposition. References to the British Raj, Partition and the political uncertainty surrounding Hyderabad surface organically in conversations, traditions and silences. The novel captures how history persists in private lives, shapes relationships, and continues to resonate long after the events themselves have passed.

This approach makes the past feel intimate and personal rather than distant and abstract. The reader is invited to experience history as lived experience rather than as a series of dates and events.

Even the book’s cover contributes to the narrative experience. The bright yellow background and the striking red eyes immediately draw one’s attention. The eyes feel watchful, almost confrontational, mirroring the story’s emotional undercurrents. They demand that the reader engage with them, much as the novel itself does.

The cover is visually striking but also thematically resonant. It sets the tone for the story inside, signalling that this is not a conventional or safe narrative but one that examines grief, memory and human complexity with honesty and care.

What is most refreshing about Forty Days of Mourning is that it centres on a woman’s inner world unapologetically. Saleema is not written to be likeable or to provide comfort to the reader. She is allowed contradiction, anger, grief and quiet moments of reflection. Her emotional life is complex and layered. In focusing on her experiences, the novel resists reducing her to her relationships or her social roles alone.

It allows the reader to sit with her, to witness her inner life, and to understand her as a fully realised human being. In a literary landscape where women’s complexity is often softened or simplified, this focus feels quietly radical.

The novel is also remarkably patient. It does not rush to reveal everything about its characters or setting. It trusts the reader to notice subtleties, to observe behaviour, and to draw connections between the past and the present.

Even small gestures or conversations carry significance. Saleema’s silences, choices, and interactions are given space to breathe. The novel builds its emotional resonance gradually, which makes the impact of its revelations all the more powerful.

At the end of the day, Forty Days of Mourning is a debut that is confident, layered and assured. It invites the reader to reflect on history, engage with a city that has often been overlooked, and witness a woman’s emotional life in all its complexity. It is a novel that lingers, quietly but persistently, long after the final page has been read. Saleema’s presence, Hyderabad’s streets, and the weight of history remain in the mind.

This is a book that reminds readers why literature matters. It does not seek to entertain with spectacle or drama. Instead, it engages the intellect, empathy and the imagination. For a debut novel, Athar has delivered something rare, thoughtful and lasting.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 1st, 2026

Malfoy, played by actor Tom Felton in the films of JK Rowling’s books, has surged in popularity due to the Chinese translation of his surname — Ma-er-fu. Meaning horse and fortune, it bodes well for China’s lunar year of the Horse.

Social media has been flooded with images of people sticking red Malfoy posters on their doors. Fans can buy four of them for 11 yuan ($1.60) on e-commerce platform Taobao.

“Year of the Horse’s blessing, so stick on a Malfoy,” said one user on China’s Rednote.

Other posts on the social media platform appeared to show a massive image of Malfoy in his uniform hanging across several floors of a shopping mall in central Henan province.

The Harry Potter franchise is incredibly popular in China, where foreign films make up a relatively small percentage of the box office due to strict quotas and a shift to local content.

Warner Bros WBD.O has agreed to develop a “Harry Potter Studio Tour” in Shanghai with Chinese group Jinjiang International, Jinjiang said last year.

A Universal Studios theme park in Beijing features “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter”, a section dedicated to Harry Potter-themed rides and attractions.

The eight Harry Potter films were re-released in Chinese cinemas in 2024.

“Bayazid never knew how he came to be a little boy alone in the streets of Rawalpindi. He had a memory more of forces than of people — a crowd, a hand, a hand no more. Yet the bazaars in those early 1950s were not so crowded as that, and Rawalpindi, a town small enough that a lost little boy should be found.”

Those sentences tell you almost everything about the book’s method. The first line is plain, almost a documentary. A boy alone. A city named. No drama. Then, the second sentence slips inward. Not people, but forces. Not faces, but pressure. A crowd. A hand. Then, the hand is gone. The language enacts what it describes. Memory thins. What remains is sensation rather than story.

The third sentence is where the knife turns. The adult voice intrudes, quietly correcting the child’s recollection. The bazaar was not that crowded. Rawalpindi was small enough that a lost child should have been found. The implication is unbearable in its restraint. If he was not found, perhaps he was not lost. Perhaps he was abandoned.

From this first paragraph, Mueenuddin is telling us that power in this world will not announce itself loudly. It will work through absence, through what fails to happen. The boy is not struck, not chased, not spectacularly harmed. He is simply not retrieved. And the rest of the book will follow the consequences of that small, devastating fact.

Mueenuddin’s first novel arrives already shadowed by the acclaim that greeted his story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. It does not retreat from the terrain that made his reputation. It expands it. What he offers is not a single dramatic arc but a social anatomy, a patient examination of how power is inherited and enforced across decades in Pakistan. The result is neither melodrama nor polemic, but a grave, clear-eyed study of how people live inside systems that modernise without ever truly changing.

The book announces its ambitions at once. It opens with a list of principal characters, complete with birthdates, educations and careers. Some studied abroad. Others emerge from the bazaars and fields of Punjab. At the book’s moral centre stands Yazid, also called Bayazid, first encountered as a small boy alone in a Rawalpindi bazaar in the mid-1950s. He is barefoot, holding a pair of cheap plastic shoes, and does not remember how he came to be abandoned.

Taken in by a tea-stall owner, he grows up among regulars who teach him to read and to watch people carefully. Yazid is bright, sociable, physically imposing, and a natural intermediary between classes. Over time, he becomes a driver and fixer for powerful families, respected but never secure, indispensable yet never equal.

Around Yazid, Mueenuddin builds the novel in four interlinked movements, each advancing in time and shifting perspective. The first traces Yazid’s apprenticeship in a world where hierarchy is absorbed almost instinctively. The second centres on Rustom, a young landowner educated in America who returns in the 1980s to revive an estate his father neglected. Rustom arrives with ideas shaped by his years abroad. He believes in reform and legality. Yet, the countryside he re-enters is governed by older logics.

The third movement turns inwards, into the marriage of Hisham Atar and his wife, Shahnaz. They are members of the elite, owners of farms and factories, equally at home in Lahore and London. Their courtship began in America, where Shahnaz was first involved with Hisham’s gentler brother. She chose Hisham instead, opting for Pakistan and the closer proximity to power that choice entailed. Mueenuddin renders their relationship without sentimentality.

The novel’s final and longest section follows Saqib, a servant’s son raised on the Atars’ estate and mentored by Yazid. Bright and ambitious, Saqib is taken into the household as a kind of project. He learns quickly, anticipating needs, absorbing the manners of power. When he is given responsibility for a section of farmland, he experiments with modern agriculture.

The venture is profitable. But Saqib wants more than success within the system. He wants independence. His attempt to step beyond the role assigned to him drives the novel toward its bleakest reckoning. The outcome feels structurally inevitable. The system tolerates small ambition. It does not forgive miscalculation.

What binds these narratives is not plot but a shared moral climate. Mueenuddin’s Pakistan is a place where modernisation coexists with feudal logic, where old hierarchies are not dismantled but retooled.

Mueenuddin’s style reinforces this vision. His prose is spare, exact, rarely ornamental. A drink of water tastes as if it “had electricity in it.” A face is sketched in a few strokes that carry both physical and moral weight. Critics have compared him to Chekhov, and the likeness is instructive. Like Chekhov, he is attentive to how people are shaped by circumstance and custom, by small accidents that alter a life without announcing themselves as turning points. A phone call not made, a device newly owned, a glance misread can redirect a fate. Yet, the novel is not merely sociological. Its power lies in the intimacy of its scenes.

Mueenuddin understands the emotional economy of servitude, how affection, resentment, gratitude and calculation coexist in relationships that are never equal. The guarded marriage of Hisham and Shahnaz carries weight without tipping into melodrama. Even moments of dry humour deepen rather than soften the portrait.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives is more expansive and more assured than the stories that first established Mueenuddin’s reputation. If there is a reservation to be voiced, it may be that Mueenuddin’s control is almost too complete. The novel is composed with such steadiness that one occasionally wonders what his voice might sound like if it allowed itself more disorder, more risk.

Yet, that very discipline is also the source of its authority. The book refuses easy villains and easy consolations. It does not sentimentalise suffering, nor does it flatter the reader with moral comfort.

In the end, This Is Where the Serpent Lives offers something rarer than topical relevance. It provides a layered portrait of a society in motion. It asks how people make choices inside systems that reward compromise and punish deviation. Quietly and patiently, it makes visible the structures that shape lives, then steps back, leaving the reader to reckon with what has been seen.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 1st, 2026