The function was arranged by Peshawarians Literary Society (PLS) at a local college to mark the fifth death anniversary of Zaitoon Bano (1938-2021).

Addressing the function as chief guest, Prof Afsha Bano, the daughter of Zaitoon Bano and vice-principal of Peshawar Public School and College, said that her mother was a true beacon of light, who transformed numerous souls through her inspirational writings, broadcast work and lifelong commitment to social enlightenment.

The commemorative event was organised to honour her monumental contributions to Pashto and Urdu literature, drawing a large number of students, scholars and literary enthusiasts from across the provincial capital.

Speakers laud the writer for breaking social barriers to give voice to women

A central highlight of the gathering was the active participation of young scholars, including Salman Haider, Raza Gilani, Shazia Roman and Bilqees Trannum, who read out selected quotes, critical excerpts and reflections from leading literary figures, including renowned Prof Abaseen Yousafzai, Bushra Farrukh and Prof Salma Shaheen. The audience warmly appreciated the young readers for effectively presenting the intellectual weight of these literary heavyweights.

Although senior intellectuals could not attend the function in person due to prior commitments, their insights, delivered through the young scholars’ well-prepared presentations, underscored Zaitoon Bano’s trailblazing role in bringing realism and gender consciousness into mainstream Pashto fiction. The literary discourse demonstrated how her narrative craft continued to resonate deeply with younger generations of readers and aspiring researchers.

Through recitations by Salman Haider and Raza Gilani, Prof Abaseen Yousafzai’s commentary highlighted that Zaitoon Bano was not merely a teller of tales, but a bold social reformer whose pen consistently challenged regressive traditions while upholding the nobility of Pakhtun culture. His quotes focused on her unique ability to portray complex societal dynamics with rare sensitivity and artistic perfection.

Excerpts presented by Shazia Roman focused on Bushra Farrukh’s reflections regarding Bano’s enduring legacy at Radio Pakistan, noting how her dramatic works, radio plays, and broadcast scripts paved the way for generations of female communicators, playwrights and literary voices across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Farrukh’s commentary noted that Bano’s powerful scripts gave confidence to women to claim space in public media.

Quotes presented by Bilqees Trannum from Prof Salma Shaheen’s academic work emphasised Bano’s mastery over regional folklore and her rare ability to capture the authentic idiom of women’s lived experiences. The critical evaluation noted that Bano enriched Pashto prose by integrating domestic folk expressions into structured literary fiction, preserving intangible cultural heritage for posterity.

Other speakers said that Zaitoon Bano’s prolific creative journey, spanning several decades, produced ground-breaking short story collections and television plays that remained benchmarks in Pashto literature. They emphasised that her literary courage opened new pathways for women writers across the region.

Originally published in Dawn, September 28th, 2026

This decision “is driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the prix Goncourt and the Academy itself, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men,” the Goncourt Academy said.

The decision to remove the book by Thelyson Orelien, a new literary sensation in the French-speaking world, caps a tumultuous week for the 38-year-old following anonymous claims against his debut novel It Was Either That or Die.

He has denied using AI and has suggested the campaign against him is racially motivated as well as an “attempt to silence my voice.” He also has promised to produce a file that will “prove” that he wrote the book himself.

The Goncourt claimed that “several credible researchers and journalists” had highlighted his prize-winning work was “in all likelihood very largely the product of artificial intelligence”. His use of AI is difficult to prove conclusively — various AI detectors give different results — but his reputation has been undercut by evidence of plagiarism published in Quebec where Orelien lives.

Montreal-based La Presse reported that a newspaper column written by him in 2013 was “almost entirely” a “lightly edited translation” of an article published a few days earlier by The Philippine Star.

Originally published in Dawn, September 26th, 2026

Charles Spencer, who delivered a much-lauded eulogy at the 1997 funeral of his sister, has sparked global headlines with a book that accuses the then-Prince of Wales of sounding like a “lottery winner” in the hours after her death.

Buckingham Palace hit back immediately, saying the king was “mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, judgment and memory”, as it sought to prevent the king from being dragged back into one of the royal family’s most damaging periods.

Top of the charts

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, was released in Britain on Tuesday, where allegations contained in pre-released excerpts have dominated newspaper front pages for almost a week, helping send it straight to the top of the bestseller list on Amazon.

Outside a central London bookshop, Chris Imafidon, 71, said he bought a copy after being intrigued by some of the allegations, which he did not see as credible. “There’s a desire for one to be protective of your sister,” he said.

For others, Diana, one of the most photographed women in the world, remains an icon, and the appeal of the “People’s Princess” endures 29 years after she died in a car crash.

“I just hope to hear more about her life with her family, growing up, and with her children,” said Mary Scheible, 69. Spencer said he wrote the book to set the record straight and because it was his duty “as an eyewitness to history”.

He said in the book that he spoke to Charles shortly after Diana’s death was confirmed. “Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time,” he wrote, according to pre-released excerpts.

“Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.”

Diana was just 20 when she married the heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles in 1981, a fairytale wedding watched around the world. They had two children, William and Harry, but the relationship soon soured and, following years of briefing against one another in the media, they finally divorced in 1996.

That was a year after Diana told the BBC that “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded” in reference to Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he married in 2005. Spencer describes his book as an intimate, loving and honest portrait of his sister, who he said became a global icon overnight.

Originally published in Dawn, September 23rd, 2026

The danger is therefore both professional and personal. Her notebook is also a record of what might happen to her, her colleagues and the women whose stories she is determined to tell. This tension gives the book its particular force. Published in this July and co-written with British-American journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman, The Vanishing Girl of Kabul combines the intimacy of memoir with the discipline and urgency of investigative journalism.

Joya’s story begins with a deceptively simple need: she wants to go to school. During the Taliban’s first rule in the 1990s, that meant becoming someone else. Her family allowed her to live for years as a “bacha posh”, a girl dressed and treated as a boy. She became Mohammed so that she could move through a world in which education was available to boys but forbidden to girls.

This transformation is not presented as a clever childhood adventure. It is an early lesson in the absurdity of a society that makes basic freedom dependent on gender.

When Joya eventually returns to school as Zahra, the emotional cost of that earlier life becomes clear. Boys still call her Mohammed. Girls recognise her as Zahra. She remembers wanting to “escape, disappear in a cloud of magical smoke”. The image is striking because disappearance will become one of the book’s central ideas. Joya spends her childhood hiding in order to exist, and later watches millions of Afghan women being pushed towards a different kind of disappearance, from schools, workplaces, streets and public life.

Yet the book refuses to turn Afghanistan into a story of unbroken darkness. That is one of its most important strengths. After the fall of the first Taliban government and the US-led intervention, Joya experiences education and professional opportunity on a scale that had previously seemed impossible.

She becomes the first woman in her family to attend university and eventually becomes a journalist determined to expose corruption and abuses against women. For her and many other Afghan women, those years represented real possibilities, whatever the failures and contradictions of the foreign intervention.

This history matters because the book is not simply arguing that Afghanistan was once free and then became unfree. It is asking what happens when people are encouraged to build lives around the promise of progress and then watch that progress disappear. The Taliban’s return in 2021 therefore becomes more than a political event. It becomes a personal rupture.

Joya had built a professional identity that was almost unimaginable during her childhood. Now she was forced into hiding and eventually exile.

Her journalism gives the memoir another dimension. Joya’s encounter with Sahar Speaks, the initiative founded by Ferris-Rotman, is especially significant. Ferris-Rotman had noticed a glaring problem in international coverage of Afghanistan — foreign journalists were regularly writing about Afghan women, often presenting Afghanistan as one of the world’s worst places to be female, while Afghan women themselves were largely absent from the foreign press corps.

Joya arrived at Sahar Speaks with limited English and asked simply, “Could I sit in a corner? I won’t bother you, I just want to learn.” She had crossed Kabul to get there.

That encounter eventually leads to Rukhshana Media, the women-led organisation Joya founded to report on Afghan women and girls. Its significance becomes even clearer after the Taliban takeover. The work is no longer simply about giving women a place in journalism. It becomes a way of documenting what power wants hidden.

Some of the book’s most disturbing passages come from these investigations. Joya and her colleagues documented dozens of cases of women who were killed or disappeared after the Taliban returned.

Among them was Khatera, a teacher found strangled with her own scarf, whose death was dismissed by the Taliban as an armed robbery. In Mazar-i-Sharif, the murders of two teenage girls sent a chilling message to other young women about the price of pursuing an education. Frozan Safi, a 29-year-old economics lecturer and activist, was eventually identified in a morgue by the clothes she was wearing.

These episodes demonstrate why The Vanishing Girl of Kabul should not be read only as a memoir. Joya is not simply remembering what happened to her. She is investigating what is happening to others. Her personal experience gives her access to the emotional reality of repression, while her journalistic training makes her attentive to names, evidence, patterns and omissions. The two forms strengthen each other.

The book is also unusually clear about the limits of Western narratives. Joya challenges the idea that Afghan women who fled simply abandoned the struggle. When a Western commentator suggests that Kabul feminists should have stayed and fought, Joya responds with the reality of what Afghan women were already doing under extraordinary pressure.

She came from the provinces, built a media organisation and continued to report when doing so could put her life at risk. Her anger is directed not only at the Taliban but also at the Western governments that negotiated with them and then failed to reckon with the consequences.

The writing itself is strongest when it moves between the intimate and the political without forcing either one to dominate. A suicide bombing is not merely another statistic because Joya’s body has learned its rhythm. The 2016 attack on a Tolo TV bus, which killed seven staff members and injured more than 20, becomes part of her understanding of what it means to work as a journalist in Afghanistan.

Later, watching footage of 17-year-old Zaki Anwari falling from an American evacuation aircraft turns the chaotic withdrawal into something painfully human: a young life, and all the possibilities attached to it, disappearing before the world.

Exile does not provide an uncomplicated ending. In London, Joya and her family initially live in a hotel before making a home in North London. They arrive with one shared backpack and diapers, and gradually acquire books, clothes and suitcases. “Without meaning to, we made a life again!” she writes. The sentence captures both relief and loss. Making a new life is possible, but it does not mean recovering the old one.

That is ultimately what makes the book significant now. The Vanishing Girl of Kabul is not a story in which rescue arrives from outside. Its central achievement is to place Afghan women inside the narrative as witnesses, journalists, investigators and political actors. Joya does not ask readers to pity Afghan women. She asks them to listen to them.

The title suggests disappearance, but the book works against it. The girls who are denied classrooms, the women who are silenced, the journalists who are threatened and the families forced into exile are all at risk of being reduced to statistics. Joya’s answer is to record their names and circumstances, to investigate what happened and to insist that their lives remain part of the historical record.

That is the quiet power of this memoir. It does not pretend that journalism can immediately defeat repression, nor does it offer easy optimism. Instead, it shows that recording the truth is itself a form of resistance. The Taliban may try to make Afghan women vanish from public life. Joya’s work makes disappearance harder. She writes so that the world cannot say it did not know.

Underlying these lines is a monist philosophy that disassembles traditional dualisms between body and mind; material and spiritual, including the divide between a guru and their disciple — ultimately God and creation.

Peero Preman (1832-1872/75), the 19th-century mystic-poet, affirms her deep love and devotion to her guru, Gulabdas. In Gulabdas, the physical and the transcendent converge seamlessly. He embodies both the singular metaphysical essence and the myriad earthly manifestations of the Divine. She says, “Creedless, casteless is saiyaan, neither Hindu nor Turk, neither woman nor man, free from the wheel of birth and death…”

Composed in Sadh Bhasha, a linguistic fusion of Punjabi, Braj Bhasha, Urdu and various Prakrit dialects, Peero utilises traditional Punjabi poetic forms, such as Kaafi, Siharfi, Baran Mah and Shabad. Synthesising Sufi, Bhakti and Advaita Vedanta values, her poetry remains inextricably connected to her own lived reality: that of a marginalised woman, a former courtesan who renounced both her profession and her religion. Anshu Malhotra, the historian, writes in Piro and the Gulabdasis, that Peero occupied a quadruple-disenfranchised position at the intersections of gender, class, religion and social status.

An English translation brings the poetry of the mystic Peero Preman to a wider audience, revealing a fearless voice that challenged orthodoxy and patriarchy

At its core, the “aesthetic sensibility” — a complex matrix of concepts, practices, and artistic expressions — is Punjabi. Readers familiar with Punjabi tradition will recognise classic forms like Kaafi, Siharfi, Barahmah, Hori and Shabad; uninitiated readers need context to appreciate their full depth. The volume addresses this need through an extensive 70-page translator’s introduction; it serves as a vital bridge into Peero’s world.

Neeti Singh’s translation of Peero’s verses into English is a “creative recreation”, blending fact, fantasy and deduction. The introductory essay, written in lyrical prose, weaves together biographical details. The narrative traces Peero’s life’s trajectory: her forced entry into the courtesan trade, her struggle for autonomy and her eventual flight to the dera [dwelling] of the charismatic saint Gulabdas.

Born into a Muslim family, she renounced her faith, withdrawing from an entire kinship network. This rift forms the central conflict in Peero’s life and poetry. Neeti Singh grounds Peero’s life in the socio-historical conditions of Ranjit Singh’s era and its courtesan culture, a background Peero repeatedly invokes in her work.

This unpacking of courtesan culture is crucial for unseating contemporary biases, as Neeti Singh emphasises: a courtesan of that era occupied a complex socio-artistic position and must not be reduced merely to an object of sexual subjugation.

In ‘Ik Sau Sath Kaafiyaan’ [160 Kaafis], the first poem, Peero speaks in the first person and, drawing upon rich Punjabi idioms, recounts the defining turning point of her life — her encounter with the charismatic Gulabdas in Lahore’s Moti Bazaar, followed by her dramatic escape from her captors. This poem, a dramatic and personal memoir, woven into the musical fabric of the kaafi, exhibits extraordinary hybridity.

However, the verse’s lingering power lies in Peero’s fearless critique of organised religion and patriarchal subjection. Confronting both Islamic clerics and Hindu pundits, she interrogates the arbitrariness of religious ritual: if a man’s faith is codified by circumcision or by wearing a moustache and shaving his head, where do women fit within these paradigms? Why are women systematically excluded from the very definitions of religious belonging?

Even more importantly, Peero packs the poem with allusions to classical mythological and mystic figures. She uses the myth of Sita’s rescue as a correlative for her own captivity and liberation, and summons Mansur al-Hallaj and Kabir, two celebrated mystical poets and spiritual figures. Ultimately, Peero’s verse creates a distinct poetic landscape that is at once personal and boldly public.

In other poems, Peero adopts the quintessential voice of a female devotee. The female persona of a longing lover, a virahini, is a foundational trope used across both Sufi and Bhakti traditions. The feminine aesthetic sensibility culminates in her Hori songs, which radiate collective joy and celebration. Because these festivities were actively staged at the Gulabdasi dera, these festive verses are dynamic texts that, in Neeti Singh’s words, present “the opera of celebration, scripted and directed by Gulabdas.”

Peero engages with traditional Barah Mah, a beautiful seasonal genre that pairs the changing characteristics of each month with the poet’s voice aching with longing. Here, she centres her devotion exclusively on Gulabdas. Through the scorching months of Chet, Vaisakh and Jeth, like a parched cuckoo crying for rain, the poetess yearns for a glimpse of her beloved. Conversely, in the fecund rains of Saavan, Peero, with her guru, celebrates the reunion.

Punjabi’s first female poet, Peero was featured in a seminal 1974 article, ‘Punjabi Di Pehli Stree Kavi’, by Dr Devinder Singh in Khoj Darpan, an academic journal published since 1973 by the School of Punjabi Studies at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, India. Her legacy also crossed into a play produced by Ajoka, which incorporated Peero’s original couplets.

Belonging to Chathian Wala, Kasur, Peero has attracted significant interest among Pakistani scholars, although her physical and archival presence remains precarious. Nothing survives of the Gulabdasi dera in Chathian Wala. My own recent visit to locate her samadhi [tomb] revealed a government school standing in place of the former sanctuary, with only a crumbling dome marking the resting place where Peero and her guru were interred.

Her poetry, unpublished and untranslated, remains largely absent from academic curricula in Pakistan. Sadly, this major edition, published in India by Speaking Tiger Books, will probably face cross-border distribution barriers, making it exceptionally difficult for Pakistani readers to access.

As a researcher working on Peero, I find that Neeti Singh’s work compellingly validates her singular voice and that it must be accessible, as she does not shy away from the explicit sensory, carnal and joyful dimensions of Peero’s life, although this may invite scholars to re-examine the traditional frameworks of mysticism. This is especially true since overly sanitised readings have reduced Sufi and Bhakti idioms, the lover-beloved and guru-disciple dynamics, to purely abstract, disembodied spiritual metaphors.

While Singh skilfully charts the synthesis of Sufi, Bhakti and Advaita currents in Peero’s thoughts, it is important to recognise that Sufism and Bhakti constitute a vast, heterogeneous landscape of sects, beliefs and practices. Peero represents a distinct, uninhibited place within this complex mystical continuum.

Bridging two languages as starkly different as Punjabi and English is an arduous task. As the Indian poet A.K. Ramanujan famously observed, the ideal translation seeks “to steer betwixt the two extremes of paraphrase and literal translation”, and this includes “keeping as near the author as one can.”

Does Neeti Singh achieve this delicate balance? Through my immersion in Peero’s poetry, I have found her diction deeply colloquial, directed by a “rhetoric of spontaneity.” While Singh methodically expands certain words to heighten aesthetic effect, significant omissions remain.

Her renderings of Siharfiyaan, simultaneously sensual and philosophical verses, appear fragmentary. Most crucially, the translations excise the bhanita, the signature closing line where Peero invariably inscribes her own name, addressing herself to seal the stanza. Furthermore, the work selected is incomplete.

Peero’s poetry is far more than an archival recovery of an early female poet; it is a living scripture of the Gulabdasi movement. Singh illuminates how Gulabdas and Peero coexisted as “profound mystics and reformist humanists.” Singh’s introduction reclaims a lost world of radical spiritual partnership, laying a crucial foundation for what must now be further retrieved in future poetic translations.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 20th, 2026

Earl Spencer spoke exclusively with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about claims he has made in a new book, alleging the then-Prince of Wales said “we’ll forget her soon enough” during an argument over whether Princes William and Harry should walk in Diana’s funeral procession.

He said he was “telling the truth” about a phone call with King Charles in the days after his sister’s death. In his first interview since, Earl Spencer said: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”

Reacting to the rare statement from the Palace, Earl Spencer said: “Well, is he furious? Is he furious or is he embarrassed?”

Speaking to the BBC at his Althorp estate, he added: “I’ve only ever had two calls on the line with Prince Charles at any stage of my life.

“I was hyper alert to what he was saying and those are precisely the words that he said and I promise that to you now. Genuinely, that is what he said. I don’t hear him saying he didn’t say that.”

Pressed on whether he had evidence to back up the claim, he said he told family and friends at the time what had been said “because it was so monstrous”. In response to the Palace disputing his account, Earl Spencer, who shares his first name with the King, said: “They’ve sort of smudged that one, haven’t they? They’ve said that recollections may vary.”

When asked which Charles the public was meant to believe, he said: “I’m telling the truth.” Buckingham Palace declined to give a response to Earl Spencer’s fresh comments.

The remarks may bring a renewed focus to the war of words between the Palace and the King’s former brother-in-law. In excerpts of his book published by the Daily Mail, Earl Spencer claims the phone call took place after he insisted Diana would not have wanted the young princes to walk in the procession. In his BBC interview, he says the King “went ballistic” and “ranted for a while”, accusing his family of not having an adequate sense of duty.

“And then he stopped and I thought, oh now, now he’s gonna pull himself together and say something more appropriate,” Earl Spencer said. “And then, he said, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’.”

He said he couldn’t say exactly what went through his mind at that moment as he was “just so stunned”, adding: “I just, after a stunned silence, I said, I cannot believe you just said that. And I hung up on him.” Earl Spencer’s book, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, is due to be published next week and is expected to be highly critical of the Royal Family.

In further extracts published on Thursday, he claimed how the King “sounded giddily elated” when he called him after Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, alleging Charles sounded like a “lottery winner”.

Earl Spencer recounts being alerted to the crash by a phone call from his sister Jane in the middle of the night at his home in Cape Town, South Africa. A call from Charles was among those that followed, and he alleges: “Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated — like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time.”

Originally published in Dawn, September 19th, 2026

The allegations prompted a rare rebuke from Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, attributing the startling claims to the clouded memory of fraternal grief.

In latest excerpts of his book Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, published on Thursday in the Daily Mail, Charles Spencer wrote that the then-Prince Charles was “giddily elated” in the immediate aftermath of Diana’s death. Spencer suspects the prince felt freed to marry again.

Taking the unusual step of responding to the criticism, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson issued a statement strongly pushing back against the allegations.

“While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss,” the spokesperson said.

In another extract, Spencer alleged that Charles subjected him to a “stream of anger” over whether princes William and Harry, then aged 15 and 12, should walk in their mother’s funeral procession. Spencer wrote that Charles hissed over the phone, “Rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough!”

Spencer said he spoke to Charles shortly after Diana’s death was confirmed.

“Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time,” Spencer wrote.

He added, “Looking back now, I suspect the prince’s first reaction must have been to think more of how this event might free him to marry the woman he loved, rather than appreciating the loss of one he did not.”

Diana, who was hugely popular in the UK, died at the age of 36 when the car carrying her and Dodi al-Fayed crashed in Paris as it sped away from chasing paparazzi on motorbikes.

Her death sparked an outpouring of grief in Britain and led to accusations that the monarchy failed to show appropriate empathy.

Both heir-to-the-throne William and Harry have spoken previously about how difficult it was to walk behind her coffin.

Charles and Diana separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. That was a year after Diana told the BBC that “there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded,” referencing Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, whom he married in 2005.

The latest excerpts also stated that Diana went to a site of many suicides on Britain’s south coast, but that her love for her sons “stopped her from going further”.

“It is a sad fact that, in her later years, Diana drove herself more than once to Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in England, while contemplating ending it all,” Spencer wrote.

Julian Payne, who served as communications secretary to Charles in 2017, told the BBC he found it hard to believe his former boss made the remarks.

“It’s just not language that I recognise,” Payne said.

Sunday Times royal editor Roya Nikkhah told the BBC the swift res­ponse hinted at the monarchy’s anger.

“Sometimes the palace have to weigh up whether or not they want to just leave things and adopt the never complain, never explain mantra,” Nikkhah said. “But I don’t think that would have washed in this scenario.”

British media likened the palace’s statement to the late Queen Elizabeth II’s 2021 response to claims of racism from Harry and Meghan, when the monarch noted that “some recollections may vary”.

Originally published in Dawn, September 18th, 2026

As the title of her new novel suggests, The Things We Never Say offers a searing exploration of the role of silence. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that some degree of solitude inspires contemplation and, thereby, facilitates our emotional well-being. However, some forms of silence can be destructive, pulling us into an endless spiral of despair and leading to a sense of alienation.

Strout’s compelling new work examines this motif with sensitivity and grace. The novel’s epigraph, which features a quote from Carl Jung, echoes the theme of loneliness. Interestingly, the Swiss psychiatrist didn’t view this condition as the mere “absence of people.” Instead, he likened it to an inability “to communicate the things that seem important to oneself” and the willingness to hold beliefs others find objectionable and “inadmissible”.

Incidentally, Strout’s protagonist, Artie Dam, encounters a similar form of isolation, which urges him to ponder Jung’s view on free will. His loneliness stems from a silence that has cast a shadow over his marriage and other intimate relationships, but he continues to maintain his composure.

From the novel’s outset, Artie is advised by his friend on a sun-kissed, mid-June day to remain “jovial”. Yet, his chances at happiness have been eclipsed by a constant spell of despair, much of it beyond his control. Past and present uncertainties threaten to weigh him down in equal measure.

A moving novel by an acclaimed American author grapples with how politics affect our daily well-being and the dual-edged nature of silences in human relationships

Artie is haunted by the memory of losing his working-class family, from whom he had grown distant after marrying the relatively well-to-do Evie. The intervening years haven’t subdued the effect of this tragedy, even though he has carved out a new life for himself since then. Artie’s marriage ushers him into the comfortable distractions of an affluent social circle as well as the joys of fatherhood.

The present, too, offers little consolation. Traumatic events have steered his son, Rob, away from his parents. The emotional distance between them may not be as intense as Artie’s aloofness from his own family, but it still leaves a lingering ache in his heart.

At the same time, Artie has to confront the terrors and ambiguities of a fractured, post-Trumpian America, where divisive politics is the order of the day. As a high school history teacher, he recognises how oppressive phases can irreparably alter the destiny of a nation. His students’ anxieties about the changing times confirm his suspicion that the future is bleak and threatening.

Disillusioned by the state of the world, Artie briefly contemplates death, only to discover that his growing pessimism hasn’t thwarted his will to live. Amid all these challenges, he discovers a secret that has the potential to shake the foundations of the fragile world he inhabits.

Any attempt to delineate Artie’s predicament in spoiler-filled detail will only prevent readers from experiencing for themselves the richness and poignancy of the novel’s plot. Suffice it to say, the life-altering secret isn’t treated with a gossipmonger’s eye for scandal in Strout’s capable hands.

The Things We Never Say doesn’t promise melodramatic confrontations or sizzling revelations. The carefully constructed calm of Artie’s life is shattered with a whimper, not a bang. Stripped of the stereotypical air of drama, the novel views silence as a balm of sorts. At one stage, readers may begin to appreciate the beauty in what has been broken and find an almost perverse comfort in the characters’ reluctance to address the resulting chaos.

The author is by no means advocating silence as a remedy to an emotional crisis. She intends to reveal how it settles into relationships and, if allowed to linger for too long, erodes their essence. In Artie’s case, silence acts as a temporary shield until it envelops him like a slow, insidious poison.

Strout doesn’t depict the spiritual and emotional disintegration of the protagonist’s world in a dark, depressing vein. The Things We Never Say doesn’t pull readers into the emotional turmoil plaguing its cast of characters. As a result, the novel benefits from a deceptive air of levity, even though it is a haunting evocation of our times. At times, the story may offer a glossier, more palatable version of some unsettling realities, but that doesn’t make it any less subversive.

The author should be commended for revealing the extent to which a populist, right-wing agenda can alter the rhythm of our lives and affect people’s emotional well-being. Even in these harrowing times, she urges us to search for the hidden traces of humanity. While Artie succeeds in finding them, a few isolated acts of kindness aren’t sufficient in buoying him through the darkness.

The strength of the novel lies in its deft, realistic characterisation. Most of the characters possess an honourable streak, making them all the more likeable, irrespective of the choices they make. Even characters who would have seemed despicable in ordinary circumstances are redeemed through a fair, nuanced portrayal. Through this technique, Strout reminds us that people harbour some semblance of humanity, even when they are influenced by the suffocating air of oppression surrounding them. Be that as it may, the author doesn’t actively endorse any of their misdemeanours in an effort to achieve objectivity.

The novel is loosely based on a linear arc, but occasionally deviates from it to pursue the emotions that tug at the characters’ heartstrings. Following these emotional threads lends a meditative and wistful quality to the text. However, this might seem a tad jarring to readers who are accustomed to a more plot-driven approach to storytelling. Fortunately, Strout handles these transitions with flair and never flags in her effort to present a compelling, tragic and quietly disturbing portrait of our times.

Seeded with refreshing insights into how anxieties surrounding politics influence our choices, The Things We Never Say critiques the nature of the world as we know it. The criticism isn’t intended to be deliberately oppositional. Through her vivid and realistic portrayal of existing tensions, Strout aims to find a pathway towards cultivating a different world for future generations.

Indeed, it is a relief to see a fiction writer holding out the promise of hope amid the doomsday scenario that holds sway.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 30th, 2026

Some of the restrictions include administrative barriers, such as the requirement to obtain a No Objection Certificate from city authorities, who routinely withhold or delay it; police violence against protesters; and the refusal or delay of permits for public gatherings.

In 2019, the provincial assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa adopted a resolution against the Aurat March and labelled its demands as “shameful and un-Islamic.” In terms of public backlash, there have been reports of petitions being submitted before the courts to ban the march, along with blasphemy complaints and police cases filed against organisers over doctored videos.

These repeated attempts to restrict the Aurat March highlight the relationship between feminism and state power that Durba Mitra examines throughout her book The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism.

A recent book documents how women in the Global South utilised knowledge production and built transnational networks to challenge authoritarianism, patriarchy and neocolonialism

It illustrates what Durba Mitra argues: women claiming public space and a state using force to stop them. The authoritarian state in the post-colonial ‘Third World’ often resorted to violence and detention to bar women from seeking their rights; the same phenomenon can be observed in the resistance against Aurat March participants in Pakistan.

This book was published in March 2026 to commemorate 50 years since the first UN International Women’s Year in 1975. The author explores the history of ‘Third World’ feminism in the face of state authoritarianism and global economic inequality in the 1970s and the decades that followed, leading women to collaborate across borders to secure their fundamental rights.

A significant contribution of the book is its examination of how global economic inequality and neocolonialism gave rise to authoritarian governments in postcolonial states, and how women in the Global South challenged authoritarian state repression. The key factors that led to the emergence of authoritarian states in the ‘Third World’, argues Mitra, were the new development programmes and debt infrastructure spearheaded by institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

These programmes exacerbated global inequality. In response to that, there emerged reactionary politics in the form of religious populist movements, such as some parts of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and even Pakistan’s ‘Islamisation’ in the 1980s, although the latter was more top-down. Some states employed authoritarian, patriarchal laws that denied women fundamental citizenship rights.

The United Nations introduced International Women’s Year in 1975 and then the UN Decade for Women from 1975 to 1985 — all this to expand research on women around the globe. Mitra calls this a very important feat for women and argues that the “international research on women as we know it would not exist” if it were not for these two events.

However, Global South women also faced the burden of aligning their research work to the international development paradigms to get funding. ‘First World’ women, on the other hand, dominated global research on women and attempted to depoliticise the theories developed by ‘Third World’ women against neocolonialism and global economic inequality.

In response, women in the Global South initiated a transnational solidarity project of knowledge production to document their experiences and get their voices heard. One example is women’s participation in international conferences across Asia, Africa and Latin America, which happened with the backdrop of nationalist politics and imperialism. Another example of transnational solidarity was the creation of the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), as a pan-Africanist organisation to decolonise research in Africa and challenge Western methods of research deployed in African societies.

Women from the Global South also created Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) as a transnational feminist network, connecting scholars and activists to challenge conventional development methods and to push for gender justice. Through all these platforms, ‘Third World’ women expressed solidarity with each other against patriarchal and neocolonial oppression.

Another profound contribution is the book’s organisation around genres of knowledge production. These include the conference, the report, the organisation, the book, and the protest. These genres highlight the ways in which ‘Third World’ women used various avenues to produce knowledge rooted in their experiences of authoritarianism and neocolonialism. By discussing these, she shows the challenges and promises of feminist thought in the Global South.

The order of these genres highlights how each form of knowledge-making process generated the conditions for the next. For example, the chapter on the book (research) is followed by the one on the protest. Through this order, she explains that women’s transnational research networks of the 1970s and 1980s were foundational to their taking to the streets against authoritarian states, since that research not only documented abuse but also provided knowledge, setting the case for protests.

Women employed protests, research, legal advocacy, and knowledge production to challenge authoritarian governments that restricted women’s rights. Through this work, these women laid bare the equality promises made during anti-colonial struggles. For example, women stood alongside men during anti-colonial struggles and were promised equal citizenship, but this promise failed after independence, with laws that made women’s status subservient to that of men. One example of women’s response to those failed promises is their protests against the authoritarian family laws in countries such as Algeria, Morocco and Pakistan.

At the end, Mitra leaves readers with three key lessons from ‘Third World’ feminist history: One, ‘Third World’ feminism was essentially anti-authoritarian; two, transnational collaboration was integral to the feminist project; and three, feminist knowledge infrastructures are fragile, since many of the institutions built by earlier generations have been threatened by authoritarian governments. The opposition to women’s current activism in Pakistan is a depiction of Mitra’s analysis: even after decades of organising, feminist gains remain vulnerable to authoritarian political structures.

One of the limitations of this book is its emphasis on the struggles of elite, educated, upper-caste women in Pakistan, India and other ‘Third World’ countries, paying little attention to the initiatives taken by other grassroots or feminist rural movements. However, Mitra acknowledges that these elite movements challenged many forms of state oppression, but failed to address religious, caste and minority oppression.

It is also worth noting that elite women had access to political and economic infrastructure through which they could influence the knowledge-making process, while rural feminist movements did not have access to these options. Still, it would have been significant to note how the exclusion of their voices affected the overall feminist project in the ‘Third World.’

Overall, Mitra tells the story of how women from the Global South built a global movement out of very little: no funding, no institutional backing and, often, no safety. This book also reminds readers that this story is not finished.

The Aurat March activists in Pakistan are raising the same demands today as those raised by ‘Third World’ women for over half a century: that women be heard, be free to organise, and be treated as full citizens.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 16th, 2026

Spencer “tells the astonishing story of his life with Diana and the tragic we­­­­ek of her death,” Penguin Random Ho­­­use said in a statement, adding it marked “the first time that Earl Spe­ncer has spoken openly and at length about his sister”. Swan Song: Diana, My Sister will be published in Britain and other countries on September 22 and translated into 12 languages. “With the 30th anniversary of Diana’s tragic death on the skyline, I’ve been inundated yet again with requests for interviews about my sister,” Spencer said.

“This has convinced me to write do­­­­wn my own thoughts and memories, once and for all,” he said, adding many op­­­­­i­­­nions were “based on untruths that have become accepted over time”.

“I want to speak on Diana’s behalf and do so in an openly positive way,” added Spencer.

Originally published in Dawn, August 19th, 2026

Her writing style is incisive and leaves room for the reader to reach their own conclusions. Her work explores the many internal shifts that women experience as they juggle roles that they are expected to play. They are mothers, wives, daughters and sisters all at once. The unifying factor in these roles is not any sort of identity crisis but a quieter and relentless weight of responsibilities.

The most prominent feature of Qadeer’s stories is her protagonists. They are vibrant, modern women facing the challenges of everyday lives. Like her, they are also Pakistani-Canadian, raised in a world different to the one their parents grew up in. Unlike their parents, for them, Canada is not an adopted country. Qadeer makes this distinction clearly, and allows her readers to understand that these women don’t think of themselves as outsiders.

The ‘othering’ — the act of making someone feel like an alien — is an external event, not an internal condition. This is because, here, the female protagonists feel at home in Canada — it is other people’s perceptions that make them feel like strangers in a place where they already belong.

A debut collection of incisive short stories by a Pakistani-Canadian author focuses on women negotiating identity, relationships and the expectations that shape their lives

Take the case of Amira in ‘Feeling Good Vibrations’, who grapples with her own insecurities as she finds herself befriended at a therapy course by Celine, an almost otherworldly, beautiful and confident woman. Amira feels ‘seen’ as she and Celine — two women from completely different backgrounds — bond over the overwhelming demands of children and family life. Celine is an “urban-hipster Toronto mom.” She is everything Amira is not — effortlessly confident and a product of her white, suburban privilege. Amira lulls herself into believing that their friendship has meaning. She describes feeling validated as the two women find common ground.

It doesn’t last long, though and she discovers this the hard way: “At what point, Amira wondered, did privilege and ignorance intersect and transform into wilful racism?” Qadeer is precise and direct, forcing the reader to pause and feel Amira’s discomfort. A passing remark, the retelling of an anecdote peppered with normalised stereotyping and racism is a moment of instant connection for anyone who has experienced being treated as an outsider.

‘Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil’ is Rehana’s post-mortem of a life lived within the throes of guilt, shame and regret. “We carry shame differently… You can’t lump all shame together… The shame of a white woman at not feeling pretty enough is not the same as the shame that comes from being told that you will never be pretty because of the colour of your skin. You can change how you look. But you can’t change the colour of your skin.” Qadeer’s words are a powerful reminder of the weight carried by South Asian women who are made to feel isolated in their relationships and their surroundings by offhand remarks and the expectations of a deeply flawed society.

Hanna in ‘Love Me a Coconut’ grapples with the unique challenges that come with raising biracial children. “My half-Pakistani daughter didn’t recognise the brown she was also painted with, what it meant to be a female of colour, how her ancestors had carried her legacy long before she was born, that she had a mother who would never be pink like her.” With great sensitivity and nuance, Qadeer describes the dynamics of an inter-faith marriage and the accompanying baggage it brings.

A deeply poignant conversation underlines the importance of a stable childhood, during which parents instil confidence within their child and prioritise their welfare without holding on to unrealistic expectations. In this short story, Qadeer shows her readers the difference between two women, each of whom experienced different childhoods and how they impact their adult lives.

Qadeer writes about domesticity not always as a comfort or constraint but as a slow erosion, and the disconnect it leaves behind as the woman searches for herself in the midst of running mundane errands. In ‘Shakey Fakey, Okay, Lady’, Sabira carries out a forensic audit of her marriage as she faces the prospect of a divorce that has been suggested by her husband. She realises that the marriage had been over for some time. Complacency had hollowed it out gradually, leaving no room for mourning.

Similarly, in ‘Gelatin’, Inaya and Greg also find themselves at a crossroads in their marriage. Inaya has done it all — the coveted list any South Asian family would be proud to see their daughter tick off: multiple degrees, marriage and children. However, she still finds herself blunted by a lack of purpose, feeling invisible in her marriage. Qadeer slows down the pace of the narrative to mirror Inaya’s increasing disassociation from her relationship and the fading away of any real sense of intimacy.

In the midst of this fog, Qadeer introduces Soraya, Inaya’s confidante and older sister. There is something to be said about her depiction of the South Asian older sister: the voice of reason, carrier of burdens and truthsayer. The South Asian older sister is a breed unto herself: often overlooked and perpetually under stress as she tries to steer her younger siblings towards calmer shores and finds herself as the designated parent.

Qadeer’s Soraya hits home when she writes, “You were the youngest and you never learned about responsibility. What it takes to stick with something even when it’s not ideal. Very few people have ideal. Why do you get to sit back and cry that it didn’t work out for you? We all have to reckon with reality. It doesn’t mean we abandon our lives.” Soraya’s frustration is palpable and leaps off the page.

Qadeer’s intuitive and judicious use of language is one of the driving forces behind each story’s narrative. She is irreverent and audaciously funny when she needs to be. In ‘Momxiety’, Yasmeen knows the stakes are high as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of school backyard politics. Finding the right clique and being accepted by them is the source of what she calls “Social PTSD”, an experience most mothers can relate to.

Sima Qadeer’s collection sheds light on the daily battles that women fight with themselves, as they renegotiate the terms of their individuality. She doesn’t fixate upon the grammar of suffering, nor does she undermine it. She relates the lived experience of second-generation Pakistani-Canadians, reminding the reader that the women in her stories are not navigating between two worlds as much as navigating a world that keeps insisting they should be.

Originally published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 16th, 2026

It’s a novel that refuses the long shot of history in favour of the close-up, tracing what it meant to be an Afghan woman when the world decided the war was over.

The prologue opens like a thriller. A dozen women are crammed into a stifling room on a hilltop outside Kabul, the settlement known as Zanabad, the City of Widows. Their leader, Kobra, fixes her gaze on Marjan, a newcomer with a soldier’s bearing and a daughter to protect. “Marjan,” she says, “You have not been honest with me.” The sentence hangs. An infant swallows a cry. Bodies press against clay walls. Then Marjan’s teenage daughter, Hawa, steps forward and speaks: “My mother has made a lot of enemies in her life. … But I’m the reason we are in danger.” In a few compressed pages, Hashimi establishes the novel’s central truth — that survival depends on the stories women tell, and on whether those stories can hold up under pressure.

The narrative moves between two timelines. In the present, August 2021, Marjan is a former operative of the Female Tactical Platoon, an elite unit trained by American Special Forces to conduct night raids. She knows that the Taliban will hunt down soldiers like her. She needs visas, safe passage and a way out for Hawa.

Interwoven with this race against time is the story of her past: a girl named Rahima, who was married at 13 to a warlord and escaped his compound while pregnant and rebuilt herself as Marjan, borrowing the name from a wounded lion at the Kabul Zoo. The dual structure asks a hard question: what safety is possible when the institutions meant to protect women — the shelter, the military, the foreign forces — dissolve overnight?

Hashimi’s prose is at its most devastating when it fixes on the body in pain. Early in the novel, teenage Rahima is examined by a doctor who confirms the pregnancy forced upon her. “Rahima let out a howl that slipped under the closed door, out of the clinic, and into the street, where it caused two women to pause their steps, but only briefly. As if they had heard a car honk or a door slam. The cry of a girl wronged by the universe was hardly remarkable.”

The passage is remarkable precisely because it refuses to amplify the scream. It notes how quickly the world absorbs a girl’s grief and moves on. This documentary restraint is sustained through the novel’s most harrowing set piece, the Abbey Gate bombing. Hashimi describes a dead child with clinical precision: “Brown curls cling to her forehead. Her hair is spread on the earth.” She does not tell the reader what to feel. The flatness becomes its own accusation.

In contrast, the 2021 sections sometimes labour under the weight of explanation. When characters debate visa categories or dissect the mechanics of the American withdrawal agreement, the dialogue flattens into information. I found the novel most persuasive when it trusted objects and gestures — a half-dozen bangles, a plastic water bottle twisted in nervous hands, a notebook with a ledger for a rubab — to carry the political argument. These small things speak louder than the speeches.

Music is the novel’s most carefully sustained motif. Hawa studies the rubab at a Kabul institute, and her lessons with Ustad Rafiqi are among the book’s finest scenes. When Hawa stumbles over a passage, her teacher stops her: “The only thing worse than a shoddy note is no note at all. … Do not sacrifice an entire song for one wayward note. The music you are playing is older than our years combined. It has survived wars and drought and fickle hearts. It will survive your choppy renditions as well.”

The lines double as an artistic credo for the novel itself, which insists that flawed, persistent creation matters more than the silence the Taliban would impose. When Hawa later plays her flute to catch a marine’s attention at the airport, music becomes survival in a literal key.

The mother-daughter relationship is the novel’s emotional core. Marjan’s love is rendered as a ferocious inventory: new sneakers, a winter coat, a bar of lavender soap left behind. Yet the intimacy sometimes stays at arm’s length; we see Marjan’s devotion more through her budgeting and her vigilance than through sustained, unguarded exchanges with her daughter. The exception is the prologue, where Hawa’s declaration earns its force through everything the novel has withheld.

What Hashimi understands with terrifying clarity is that the end of a war is not the end of danger for women; it is simply its reconfiguration.

This insight pulses beneath every scene. When the Americans withdraw, the threat Marjan faces is not new. It is the same patriarchal violence she fled a decade earlier, now wearing the legitimacy of state power. The Female Tactical Platoon, which offered the brief illusion of institutional protection, evaporates. The shelter that once saved her can no longer guarantee anything. Hashimi refuses the consolations of rescue. The airport sequences are suffused not with the romance of escape but with the grinding logistics of survival, the slow accumulation of small betrayals and sudden losses that define humanitarian catastrophe.

In the context of Hashimi’s career, City of Widows marks a maturation. Her earlier novel, The Pearl That Broke Its Shell, explored the tradition of bacha posh with evident research that sometimes sat uneasily on the surface. Here, history is absorbed into character and scene. The closer, more fragmented third-person perspective mirrors the characters’ precarious hold on safety and identity. The reader is never entirely comfortable, and that discomfort is the point.

If the novel has a weakness, it is a tendency to name its own themes.

Words like resilience and resistance appear with a frequency that risks dulling their edge. Hashimi does not need them. When Soraya, Marjan’s fellow soldier, defends her right to wear lipstick on a night mission — “if I die, I die pretty” — the politics are unmistakable without commentary. I wished the novel had allowed more such moments to speak for themselves, trusting the reader to recognise rebellion in a tube of lipstick, defiance in a rubab string.

The epigraph is drawn from Rumi: “Ever since I was cut from my bed of reeds / My song can elicit human tears.” Hashimi treats separation as a formal problem. Her characters are severed from names, homes, families, countries, and the novel’s fractured timeline enacts that severance at the level of structure. It is an elegant solution, though it occasionally slows the narrative.

City of Widows is a novel for readers who believe fiction can engage with contemporary crisis without abandoning its obligations to art. It will resonate with those who admired the moral sweep of Khaled Hosseini’s work but longed for a more granular immersion in female interiority. Hashimi offers no easy redemption. She turns her characters into allegories of nothing. I closed the book not with a tidy political thesis but with a sensory residue: the grain of a rubab’s note, the scent of lavender soap, the weight of a water bottle twisted in a soldier’s tired hands. These are small things, but in Hashimi’s hands, they are enough.

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”.