THIS Changes Everything is an accessible, powerful, and timely contribution to the public discourse on climate ...
Published 08 Feb, 2015 06:51am
IN one of the many inconsequential literary sittings, where mostly inexperienced Urdu poets and writers present ...
Published 08 Feb, 2015 06:51am
YOU are deterred from reading the book when you realise it is about the 1971 war. The ignominy of the defeat and the...
Updated 22 Feb, 2015 12:56am
I’M just going to say it — Margaret Atwood can’t really go wrong. With a career spanning 50-odd years and with...
Published 08 Feb, 2015 06:51am
FOR many Hindi film buffs, the 1950s and 1960s are considered the golden age of Hindi cinema; a time when some of ...
Published 08 Feb, 2015 06:51am
THE fiery collection of Urdu short stories titled Angaray is now regarded as the starting point of the Progressive...
Published 08 Feb, 2015 06:51am
By Rishi Majumder
Published 01 Feb, 2015 06:14am
TARAR, travels and travails go together. They have been doing that for almost half a century now, producing a horde...
Published 01 Feb, 2015 06:14am
THE late recognition of Majeed Amjad as a poet has served him well. He belonged to the period of the 1930s and 1940s...
Published 01 Feb, 2015 06:14am
DR Ayesha Jalal is widely recognised, both nationally and internationally, as a pre-eminent historian for South Asia...
Published 01 Feb, 2015 06:14am
IN the reception room of a doctor’s office that I visit twice a year there is a shelf filled with novels donated ...
Published 01 Feb, 2015 06:14am
By RISHI MAJUMDER
Published 01 Feb, 2015 06:14am
"Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
: A tribute to Begum Akhtar
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
IF she’s not that kind of girl, then what kind of girl is she?At 28, Lena Dunham is the kind of girl who allegedly...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
ELIF Shafak pays homage to the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan in her new multi-layered novel The Architect’s...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
FAR away from the sights and sounds of big cities, removed from the cacophony of literature festivals and with no...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
DEAN of Social Sciences and Arts at Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, Dr Yousuf Khushk, and chairperson of the...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
Professor Halil Toker, head of Urdu Language and Literature Chair, Istanbul University, also attended the conference...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
IN the latest issue of Me’yar, the research journal of the Urdu department of the International Islamic...
Published 25 Jan, 2015 07:43am
Reviewed by Sameen Amer
Updated 04 Jul, 2015 08:37pm
IN recent months we have had memoirs by two Indian actors par excellence. The first was by Dilip Kumar, The ...
Published 18 Jan, 2015 07:19am
‘WHAT I Know For Sure’ is the name of Oprah Winfrey’s monthly column published in her magazine, O. The...
Published 18 Jan, 2015 07:19am
The following excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘Women’s rights and entitlements to land in South Asia’
Published 18 Jan, 2015 07:19am
The Annual of Urdu Studies (AUS), a literary journal published under the editorship of Professor Muhammad Umar Memon...
Published 18 Jan, 2015 07:19am
IN one of the opening scenes of Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece, Shatranj kay Khilari, the camera pans out to depict ...
Published 18 Jan, 2015 07:19am
FOR this column, my first of 2015, I was planning to see in the new year with an upbeat piece about the history and...
Published 18 Jan, 2015 07:19am
PAKISTAN’S counterterrorism policy and its objectives continue to lack clarity as the civilian government ...
Published 11 Jan, 2015 06:52am
THE interesting phenomenon of the linguistic and literary culture of Urdu that I am going to talk about here, and...
Published 11 Jan, 2015 06:52am
THE British came to the subcontinent with the mindset of introducing the culture of state governance by law in a ...
Published 11 Jan, 2015 06:52am
AH, Dubai. The land where everything is bigger, better, shinier and newer. Where the answer to any problem is to...
Published 11 Jan, 2015 06:52am
A YOUNG soldier “born in war, raised in war” is caught in the madness, fear and horror of the mid-17th century...
Published 11 Jan, 2015 06:52am
THIS column may be read as a continuation of the one published last week, which dealt with the writings of three...
Published 11 Jan, 2015 06:52am
THE August 11 speech by Mohammad Ali Jinnah is one of the most quoted and interpreted pieces of history in Pakistan...
Published 04 Jan, 2015 06:23am
LAST week I was on a short visit to Delhi at the invitation of the Ghalib Institute. The occasion was the...
Published 04 Jan, 2015 06:23am
FROM the Nuskha-e Hamidiyya; composed before 1821:
The script of the...
Published 04 Jan, 2015 06:23am
WRITING in the 1960s and 1970s, the Marxist sociologist Hamza Alavi produced a seminal account of what he called the...
Published 04 Jan, 2015 06:23am
Reviewed by Sameen Amer
Updated 04 Jul, 2015 08:44pm
TOBIAS Hill’s latest novel, What was Promised, takes us to the post-World War II London. Three immigrant families...
Published 04 Jan, 2015 06:23am
WHEN the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture was released this year there was talk about the explosive...
Published 28 Dec, 2014 06:46am
By Raza Naeem
Published 28 Dec, 2014 06:46am
As 2014 concludes, Books and Authors takes a look at some of the significant books, writers and trends of the past...
Published 28 Dec, 2014 06:46am
Reviewed by Seher Naveed
Published 28 Dec, 2014 06:46am
THEY say that Majeed Amjad, the Jhang-born poet who lived in Sahiwal, was a recluse; he shunned social life and had...
Updated 30 Dec, 2014 01:22pm
Fill up the empty spaces as Hasan ki Soorat-e-Haal is here
Published 28 Dec, 2014 06:46am
THE volumes of Pakistani English fiction I’ve accumulated and carted between continents over the last 12 months ...
Published 28 Dec, 2014 06:46am
Reviewed by Bilal Tanweer
Published 21 Dec, 2014 06:46am
AS December days become shorter and darker, I find it hard to believe that just four weeks ago at this time I was on...
Published 21 Dec, 2014 06:46am
WHEN Dr Salome Zajadacz-Hastenrath wrote her masterful book Chaukhandi Gräber in 1978, one had thought that was the...
Updated 22 Dec, 2014 11:45am
THE Bunker Diary is 16-year-old Linus’ diary, written in an underground bunker where he has been trapped along ...
Published 21 Dec, 2014 06:46am
Reviewed by Fareeha Rafique
Published 21 Dec, 2014 06:46am
WE have seen a number of books on the massive cross-migration of population on communal lines as a result of riots ...
Updated 21 Dec, 2014 07:22pm
MIRZA Muhammad Hadi Ruswa is famous for one of the earliest novels of Urdu, Umrao Jan Ada. It is based on the...
Published 21 Dec, 2014 06:46am
CAITLIN Moran’s latest book, How to Build a Girl, is the story of 14-year-old Johanna Morrigan from a family ...
Published 14 Dec, 2014 06:39am
IF ever there were a time to not judge a book by its cover, it would be during the longlisting of novels for the Man...
Published 14 Dec, 2014 06:39am
HERMITS have their own world, their own sense of perception and expression, and, indeed, their own interpretation of...
Published 14 Dec, 2014 06:39am
The following excerpt is taken from the chapter, ‘Human and civil rights of marginalised sections’
Published 14 Dec, 2014 06:39am
AS the nature and goals of terrorism change, dialogue or negotiation with terror groups such as the self-styled...
Published 14 Dec, 2014 06:39am
THE Bāng-e Darā (Call of the Bell) of Iqbal has given us a simple, cute poem called ‘A Cow and a Goat,’ a poem...
Published 14 Dec, 2014 06:39am
THOUGH inequalities, across countries as well as within them, are large, on average people living today are much...
Published 07 Dec, 2014 07:09am
TWO women travel to the same point on earth from opposite directions and almost 30 years apart, their journeys, ...
Published 07 Dec, 2014 07:09am
WHILE a lot has been written about Amitabh Bachchan, there is a dearth of material on the man whose throne he...
Published 07 Dec, 2014 07:09am
RUMMAGING through books, old and new, arranged unsystematically in my bookshelf, I came across a thin volume titled...
Published 07 Dec, 2014 07:09am
Reviewed by Waqar Zaidi
Published 07 Dec, 2014 07:09am
WHEN he was translating St-John Perse’s poem Anabase, T. S. Eliot wrote to the French poet to say that he...
Published 07 Dec, 2014 07:09am
Reviewed by Sameen Amer
Updated 04 Jul, 2015 08:47pm
MYANMAR has been in and out of the news since 1962 when its army dismissed the civilian government. Among the ...
Published 01 Dec, 2014 03:54pm
DISTINGUISHED critic Dr Anwar Ahmad has come out with a novel idea. He says that “we stand in need of some common...
Published 01 Dec, 2014 03:54pm
THE success of Bina Shah’s previous novels has depended largely on their fast-paced, high-stakes plots, ...
Published 01 Dec, 2014 03:54pm
ON the morning of Oct 13, 1970 the body of the former CSP officer and famous poet, Syed Mustafa Zaidi, was found at...
Published 01 Dec, 2014 03:54pm
RAISE your hand if you were once obsessed with nursery rhymes. Jack Spratt who ate no fat, the poor helpless three...
Published 23 Nov, 2014 07:44am
AS Hanif Kureishi wrote in a recent article for The Guardian, today’s immigrant is facing the ultimate ...
Published 23 Nov, 2014 07:44am
DAVID Nicholls’ Us did not make the cut for The Man Booker Prize 2014 shortlist and it is true that it was berated...
Published 23 Nov, 2014 07:44am
SINCE 1947, Pakistan has passed through an unending sequence of critical junctures. Reeling from crisis to crisis,...
Published 23 Nov, 2014 07:44am
Oh Lord, let this two-toned rose find place in the corner of the turban of acceptanceAnd let thanks be due from me ...
Published 23 Nov, 2014 07:44am
ECONOMIC Impact of HIV/AIDS on Households by Savio P. Falleiro provides comprehensive research on how individuals ...
Published 23 Nov, 2014 07:44am
REGRETTABLY, as with Hasan Manzar, but perhaps to a greater degree, the conspicuous absence of Ikramullah from...
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
EVERY time Mushtaq Ahmad Yusufi, the wordsmith par excellence, penned a book, he came, he saw and he conquered. This...
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
PARVEEN Shakir was born on a rainy day in November 1952, in Karachi. By the age of 25, she had made her mark as a...
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
ERUDITE political journalist, B.Z. Khasru, focuses his attention in The Bangladesh Military Coup and the CIA Link on...
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
The following excerpt is taken from the chapter, 'Accumulation, Estrangement, and Displacement'
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
SRINAGAR, Kashmir, in the early 1990s. A young man paints dozens of delicate naqashi papier-mache pencil boxes that...
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
“Characters are my primary objects of love.” — Mirza Waheed
Published 16 Nov, 2014 06:20am
Reviewed by Kabir Altaf
Published 09 Nov, 2014 07:16am
Reviewed by Raza Naeem
Published 09 Nov, 2014 07:16am
TO contemporary readers who are unfamiliar or out of touch with the obscurer lamentations of England’s...
Published 09 Nov, 2014 07:16am
MEDIA Safety in Pakistan: A Study of Threats to Journalists in Pakistan, published by the Pakistan Institute for...
Published 09 Nov, 2014 07:16am
TO those fortunate enough to have known him, Akhtar bin Shahid Jafri, or simply A.B.S., was a towering personality....
Published 09 Nov, 2014 07:16am
OXFORD University Press in Karachi is bringing out selections from Urdu poets keeping in view the common readers of...
Published 09 Nov, 2014 07:16am
ITALIAN academicians and practitioners have been involved in conservation and restoration measures across Pakistan...
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
Every day the world is beloved by me, the seagull eager / for its perch. I woke up this morning to a darkened room,...
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
IN SEPTEMBER, INTIZAR HUSAIN WAS MADE AN OFFICER OF THE ORDER OF ARTS AND LETTERS OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY, IN...
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
Asif Farrukhi’s comments on Intizar Husain’s work on the occasion
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
HONESTLY, I don’t even know where to begin with The Blazing World. Longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker prize, Siri...
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
RABA’I Al-Madhoun was born in Al-Majdal, Ashkalan (now Ashkelon), Palestine, in 1945. Along with his parents, he...
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
THE poetic form of the marsiya has come to be associated, in Urdu, exclusively with the tragedy of Karbala. We can...
Published 02 Nov, 2014 06:27am
THE 7th Urdu Conference started with a big bang. At the opening ceremony, there were people all over the place. Even...
Published 27 Oct, 2014 02:19pm
KEEPING Urdu alive in an age promoting a homogeneous — and, indeed, humongous — culture is quite a challenge. If...
Published 27 Oct, 2014 02:19pm
SESSIONS in memoriam are generally meant to relive the lives of people who were able to give some meaning to the...
Published 27 Oct, 2014 02:19pm
