by Ali Azam Khan Concealment is not the same as deception. It is also not a euphemism for deception because their consequences differ accordingly. The book in review In Evil Hours by the legendary Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist Gabriel García Márquez, explains how a society with a small number of people, and almost cut-off from the outside world, can swing …

Raza Naeem on the enduring appeal of Sibte Hasan’s ‘Mazi Ke Mazar’, 50 years after it was written   by Raza Naeem In our part of the world, the life of books is too short – not unlike an untimely death in infancy. It is a small mercy if a book manages to live for four or five years, but it …

Algerian poet Djamal Amrani was born in 1935 in Sour El Gozlane. Central to his life and work were his involvement in the Algerian liberation movement, and his arrest and torture by the French Army for participating in a 1956 student strike. Amrani was imprisoned for two years for his revolutionary activities, and then expelled to France. From this ordeal …

In this article, Raza Naeem remembers Khalida Hussain, an esteemed Urdu short story writer who passed away on January 11, 2018.   by Raza Naeem “Somebody speaks inside me day and night: Now it’s your turn…now you will see.” And then as the mystery gets deeper, the story’s mystery. These lines come at the climax of Sawari (Ride), the representative short story …

Islamabad: New edition of Adbiyat, the quarterly literary publication of Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) has been published. The literary publication was unveiled on Tuesday at the Academy. Speaking on the occasion, PAL Chairman Junaid Akhlaq said the academy is trying its best to produce literary books which reflect the collective thoughts of Pakistani nation. The  119th volume of Adbiyat …

 by Ali Azam It is very rare to randomly pick a title and enjoy it all the way through without rolling your eyes. Mitch Albom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto is one such book. It’s the writer’s ability to drag the reader into the realm of magic without incepting any notion of surrealism, especially for cynical critics. The best …

Renowned Pakistani poet, Himayat Ali Shair passed away in Toronto, Canada on Tuesday. He was 93. According to reports, the poet suffered from cardiac arrest in the morning. Shair was born on 14 July, 1926, in Aurangabad, India and moved to Karachi after Partition. He then pursued an MA in Urdu at the Sindh University, Jamshoro, to start his writing …

While we’re losing biological diversity, we’re also losing linguistic and cultural diversity at the same time. This is no coincidence. By Chi Luu The world is getting uncomfortably warm. At present, much of Europe is suffering under a heatwave of record-breaking temperatures. It’s so hot that piles of manure are spontaneously combusting and setting off wildfires in Spain. Across the pond, mussels looking …

Language emerges as a powerful manifestation of a culture that acts as an identity-marker at the individual and societal levels, writer Professor Dr Shahid Siddiqui. Dr Shahid Siddiqui Language and society constantly influence each other. Social factors, such as age, gender, class and religion, influence language; conversely, language impacts society in a relatively subtle way. Path-breaking research conducted by American …

Raza Naeem offers a translation in which the late Enver Sajjad (1935 – 2019) writes about himself and his art by Raza Naeem Translator’s Note: One of Pakistan’s last true Renaissance men, writer, novelist, artist, actor, dancer and playwright, Dr Enver Sajjad passed away on June 6 last week. He was one of the last Pakistani writers who wrote fiction of an …

Raza Naeem on the politics and worldview contained in the work of Kaifi Azmi (1919–2002) by Raza Naeem “Stone Kaifi to death, the rulers cried The Messiah? We do not know where he hides!” Born Syed Athar Hussain Rizvi, a hundred years ago this year, Kaifi Azmi, who passed away into eternity seventeen years ago on the 10th of May earlier …

Aziz Ali Dad thinks about the flux and fixity of ideas over the past two millennia by Aziz Ali Dad When the Indian Subcontinent came under the rule of the British Empire, it came into contact with the ideas dominating the European intellectual scene. Discussion about the Enlightenment and its by-product modernity was made necessary in India by the need for …

Harris Khalique’s new English poetry collection documents people’s suffering Farman Ali Noted poet Harris Khalique’s new collection of poetry in English hits the stands. The book “No Fortunes to Tell” documents personal experiences and human sufferings — from Waziristan to Balochistan to Aleppo and Yemen and evolution of his craft in English. “It is the culmination of a decade of …

by Raza Naeem “I am the trader of sighs To versify blood is my mission Remaining winds of the garden! Gather your refuges…for My fiery songs Are about to cause an upheaval within depressed bosoms” When the Jallianwala Bagh massacre occured in 1919, Saadat Hasan Manto was nine years old. The hero of Jallianwala Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew was a close relative …

Najam Sethi reviews Nasim Zehra’s book From Kargil to the Coup: Events that shook Pakistan The Kargil story or “misadventure” is now well known, thanks in no small part to Nasim Zehra’s chilling thriller From Kargil to the Coup: Events that shook Pakistan. The book was published last year, twenty years after the event. You can understand why it took so …