Acclaimed author Sara Suleri is no more

Author and academic Sara Suleri Goodyear died on Monday, according to media reports. She was 69.

Although there was no official word from her family, many in the literary community shared the news and paid rich tribute to her.

Born in 1953 in Karachi to renowned journalist Z.A. Sulehri and Welsh English professor Mair Jones, she was best known for her memoir, Meatless Days, which describe her years in Lahore.

Educated at the Kinnaird College and Punjab University, Sara went on to complete her PhD and started her teaching career from Yale University.

Her most famous work, Meatless Days, was published in 1989 and perhaps was never out of print, at least in Pakistan. Critic Muneeza Shamsie writes that the book encapsulated the memories of her Lahore childhood and, at the heart of the book were the tragic incidents that led to the death of Sara’s mother and sister. However, it also describes the political and social conditions of the country and the city of Lahore.

Sara went on to publish The Rhetoric of English India in 1992, followed by Boys Will Be Boys: A Daughter’s Elegy in 2003. She married Austin Goodyear, an electronics and retail company executive, in 1993 and adopted the surname of Goodyear.

Originally published in Dawn, March 22, 2022