Pakistan

Introduction

In 2021 saw an extensive and stimulating literary production, despite the continuing Covid pandemic and inevitable delays. The year saw new novels by established writers Omar Shahid Hamid, Sarvat Hasin, Irshad Abdul Kadir, Awais Khan, Maniza Naqvi and Saad Shafqat and fiction debuts by Shahbano Alvi, Usman T. Malik, Saima Mir, Huma Qureshi, Zain Saeed, Peerzada Salman, Mira Sethi. There were new poetry collections by Anjum Altaf and Ejaz Rahim and debut poetry volumes by Fatima Ijaz and Sarosh Latif. There was thought-provoking life writing by Arifa Akbar, Aamer Hussein and Javed Jabbar; important translations of Ismat Chughtai, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir, Bushra Rehman, and Sindhi folk songs; anthologies edited by Claire Chambers, Harris Khalique, Irfan Ahmad Khan and Sherry Rahman; critical work by Shahid Imtiaz and others and significant non-fiction writings by a range of authors, including Akbar S. Ahmed and Samira Shackle.

In the diaspora, Ayad Akhtar’s novel Homeland Elegies won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; Anis Shivani’s novel A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less won the Gold IPPY Independent Voice Award; Ambreen Hameed and Uzma Hameed’s novel Kinship of Jinns won the Bath Award and Irfan Ali’s poetry collection Accretion was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. In Pakistan, Uzma Aslam Khan’s novel The Miraculous History of Nomi Ali won the KLF Getz Pharma award, Dure-e-Aziz Amna’s short story “You Get What Is Yours” won the Salam Award for imaginative fiction and Alia Ahmed’s short story “Najma” won the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Prize for women. The Pakistan Academy of Letters 2019 awards included the Kamal-e-Fun lifetime achievement award for Asad Muhammed Khan, the Daud Kamal Award for Aamnah Shahid’s poetry volume Squeezed Emotions and the Patras Bokhari Award for H.M. Naqvi’s novel The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack.

Anjum Altaf’s poetry collection More Trangressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, follows his first collection Transgressions and consists of spare, precise English poems which engage with and are inspired by “an idea or a feeling evoked” from Faiz’s Urdu original. The collection includes “Transformation”, “Sorrow” and “All That Was Left Unsaid” revolving around Faiz poems on the 1971 conflict and the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Several poems, including “Voice” focus on the power of words and their resonance; “City Lights” becomes a message of hope; “From a Prison” and “Solitary Confinement” are influenced by Faiz’s writings as a political prisoner. Ejaz Rahim’s Dear Brother Basit and Other Poems centres on the 46-page title poem mourning the loss of his brother and celebrating his life across Kashmir, Nathiagali, Lahore and London. Several poems focus on the human spirit, spirituality and nature; others address socio-political issues and focus on the pandemic in “Hai Corona, Wai Corona”, “Corona Virus” “Islamabad in Corona Time”. Fatima Ijaz’s lyrical first collection The Shade of Longing and Other Poems is developed through five sections “Memory I”, “Memory 2”, Barzakh”, “Sceptic” and “Leave-Taking” which reflect on friendships and family, love, loss, hope and creativity and are imbued with metaphorical images of birds and natural life and often engage with literature, mythology and art. Sarosh Latif’s Let’s Barter Silence and Sounds is a particularly unusual debut: each poem is accompanied by skilled Urdu translations by Nodan Nasir. Latif’s spare poems, including “Legacy” and “Quest”, provide a biting critique of patriarchy, age-old social customs and social iniquity; others, such as “From Loneliness to Solitude” which merges the real and surreal and “Barter” which tells of two melancholy people and a therapeutic cure, comment on solitude; “A Futile Life” juxtaposes the narrator’s life in Lyallpur with memories of her sojourn in Scotland and a lost love.

Komal Mahmood draws on Greek classics and ancient lore in his poetry collection Theomachy: War of the Gods and in his play Hypnos Bound: A Chthonic Rhythm; the latter appears to be the year’s only published Pakistani English drama. Anoushka Khan’s graphic novel Still Life employs vivid poetry and prose and skilled illustrations to describe a young woman’s quest for her missing husband, an enthusiastic mountaineer, and her fear of the mountains and lurking dangers; the spectacular landscapes, flora and fauna, remote villages and memories of the narrator’s married life are built in as is her relationship with her father, an archaeologist and her mother, a medical doctor.

There was a strong offering of debut fiction too. As a writer of speculative fiction, Usman T. Malik published his riveting first collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan which cleverly entwines the extraordinary, the real and the surreal and often incorporates scientific details and related imagery to great advantage; this includes “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family”, winner of the Bram Stoker award, which draws on energy, fusion, atomic particles, the composition of the world, and Sumerian legends to portray Sohail and Tara, an enraged brother and a loving sister, who are endowed with mysterious powers. In “In the Ruins of Mohenjodaro”, a tourist finds a terrifying pre-historic past coming alive; “Ishq” tells of a lame girl’s love for a street vendor in Lahore’s historic walled city overtaken by floods; “The Wandering City” revolves around a mysterious structure near Lahore with high “black stone walls”, which seemingly burn in the sunlight; “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung” tells of a heroin addict, the healing power of snakes and a hakim with ulterior motives.

The award-winning writer and journalist Huma Qureshi’s incisive first collection Things We Do Not Tell People We Love focuses on British Asian women and uses innuendo and inference to great advantage to convey cultural conflicts and family pressures with unexpected consequences. The book includes “The Jam Maker”, winner of the 2020 Harper’s Short Story prize, a tale of love and hate, which assumes an unexpected twist as the narrator recalls childhood memories. The conflict between mothers and daughters is central to several other stories, including “Summer” and “Too Much”. Several stories comment on British Asian families determined to control their daughters, including “Premonition”, which juxtaposes a woman’s struggle for independence and self with the hypocrisy and double standards of men; in “Foreign Parts” an Englishman discovers that his fiancée is a very different person in Lahore from the one she is in London.

Mira Sethi’s accomplished debut collection Are You Enjoying employs both wit and sensitivity to portray aspirations, dreams, confusions and conflict. The title story captures a young woman’s troubled family life and her complex relationship with a dashing older man, who is already married. “Mini Apple” tells of a young Pakistani man in Islamabad who is deeply attracted to his neighbour, an enigmatic single woman and an American diplomat. Sethi makes an incisive comment on ambition and stardom in “Breezy Blessings” where an aspiring actress is confronted with sexual ambition and media manipulation. In “A Life of its Own”, a young woman has idealised dreams of life abroad with her America-educated husband-to-be only to find the reality of marriage is grounded in the exigencies of his family and her powerlessness.

Other notable first collections include the publisher Shahbano Alvi’s first collection A Woman and the Afternoon Sun and journalist Peerzada Salman’s Ephemera. Alvi’s feminist writing also engages with pre-1971 East Pakistan and often employs the voice of animals and birds to comment on mankind’s foibles. Salman transmutes human irrationality into lively fiction, and some stories cleverly intertwine the narrator’s literary engagement with his daily life; Calvino informs “If on a Winter’s Morning”, the tale of a man waiting impatiently for his halva puri breakfast; “For the Love of Marquez” employs 100 Years of Solitude to illuminate aspects of the narrator’s literary friend.

The year saw several accomplished first novels. Shams Haider’s 2 Champa House captures the life, culture and customs of a fictitious Muslim princely state through three royal siblings; it moves from World War I and nationalist politics to Partition and Independence. Of Smokeless Fire by A. A. Jafri, a riveting work of speculative fiction revolves around the Muslim belief in jinns against the backdrop of post-independence Pakistan from its early years to the present. Little America by Zain Saeed, an imaginative, unusual and vivid novel structured through letters written by the imprisoned Sharif to a famous writer, describes Sharif’s rise and fall. Sharif, a scholarship student to an elite Karachi school and son of a poor bank clerk, discovers many classmates (and others) engaged in secret liaisons, longing to jettison the restrictions of a puritanical, totalitarian, right-wing Pakistan — as he does — and lead a life of “freedom” portrayed in American films. Sharif’s attempts to address this and his enterprising ideas, inspire T. J., a wily America-returned financier. Together, they create “Little America” in the form of the Pyramid, a huge compound on the Karachi coast in total disregard for the laws of the land and forbidden to the Authorities, the press, conservatives, mullahs, critics and others. Sharif realizes gradually that none of this takes human fragility into account, nor the wages of social inequality, bribery and corruption.

The power of money and the affectations of the very rich is central to Aliya Ali-Afzal’s first novel Would I Lie to You. Faiza, a second-generation British Pakistani married to an Englishman, Tim, lives in a privileged upmarket London neighbourhood, but Tom suddenly loses his lucrative job in The City and cannot find another. Faiza’s crisis is accentuated by the fact that she has secretly spent their savings to keep up with her rich English neighbour friends. The complex twists and turns that follow impel the plot and Faiza’s difficulties are compounded by issues of culture, class, race and gender that she and indeed, her “mixed race” children, must negotiate.

There were notable works by established novelists too. Sarvat Hasin comes into her own with her third novel The Giant Dark, an imaginative and unusual work, rich with metaphorical literary references merging South Asia and the diaspora with today’s transcultural universalism. The novel engages with the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, but reverses gender roles to tell of Aida, a world-famous singer and performer and her complex but passionate relationship with the unemployed but talented Ehsan, an aspiring poet in London; both defy the pressures of their sub-continental families. The narrative is interspersed with the collective voice of Aida’s admirers which, like a Greek chorus, incorporates details and pertinent questions to comment on the tale in which Aida’s mysterious disappearance from public life takes her to Ehsan’s hometown, Karachi.

The writer, development worker and publisher Maniza Naqvi addresses migration, identity, belonging and exploitation in her sixth novel The Inn which tells of medical doctor, Salman Mohammed (known as Sal to his American friends) in Washington DC. Increasingly alienated from Pakistan, his homeland and his demanding wife there, he discovers an idyllic holiday resort in America, a scenic inn run by a very well-travelled couple, both erstwhile development workers. But Sal’s relationship with them and their American friends often involves endless negotiation against ingrained prejudice about the Third World as well as their Islamophobia.

The combination of western ideas and an American education alongside the traditions of Pakistan permeate Irshad Abdul Kadir’s third novel The Lady of Sohanbela which provides rare and unusual insights into feudal and spiritual life in Pakistan. Kamila, an orphaned young academic, discovers that she is the gaddi nashin, the spiritual head of a famous shrine (dargah) Sohanbela. Threatened by avaricious male relatives, she was secreted away and brought up by an uncle. Her discovery of the dargah’s spiritual life and the emotional complexities of her arranged marriage to Mansoor, a wealthy, well-educated, but widowed landlord, traumatized by the suicide of his previous wife, are central to the tale, as are age-old family enmities. Awais Khan’s second novel No Honour provides a biting criticism of patriarchy, power and corruption in a small Pakistani town. The 16-year-old Abida falls in love with a university student, Khalil, and becomes pregnant, but manages to escape from being killed publicly, in the name of honour, by the local Pir. However, after their marriage, Khalil turns into a gambler and a drug dealer: Abida’s exploitation and suffering in a distant city where she is sold into a brothel, is interwoven by her intelligence and her survival instincts and her much-loved father’s determination to find her.

The award-winning writer, Omar Shahid Hamid published his fourth police thriller Betrayal which traverses India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, France and Britain to tell of policeman Sameer, his love for his erstwhile classmate Aleena, now an expatriate fashion-star, and the incarcerated Zizi, a Muslim jihadi in France; at the heart of the novel is the unknown identity of an Indian double agent, known as the Deep Leopard. Hamid captures well the intricacies of Pakistani politics across the decades and the pressures the police and law enforcement agencies face alongside the subversive and ambiguous world of spies. The neurologist Saad Shafqat’s second medical thriller Rivals captures the intense competition between two leading doctors, Taniya Shah, a trauma-surgeon, and Hammad Baig, an ophthalmologist; both aspire to the coveted post of Head of Surgery at a leading Karachi hospital. Their competitiveness is skilfully interwoven with hospital and city life, including urban violence and the challenging medical procedures both doctors must perform.

The year saw significant life writing too. Journalist Arifa Akbar’s moving autobiography, Consumed: A Sister’s Story revolves around the illness and death of her sister, Fauzia, aged 45. Akbar tells of sibling bonds and conflicts, parental tensions and the family’s migration from Lahore to London where Arifa was born and where she and Fauzia, a gifted artist, grew up. She incorporates with great sensitivity the depression that afflicted Fauzia and she enriches her account with references to literature, music and art ranging from My Beautiful Laundrette, Little Women and La Boheme to the Sistine Chapel. Literary texts in Urdu, English and European languages are also central to Aamer Hussein’s creative memoir Restless: Instead of an Autobiography, a poetic criss-crossing of languages, life writing and fiction, built up of memoir essays which frame a sequence of stories described as “autofiction”. Hussein, “a Karachi-born Londoner”, provides thought-provoking insights into language, migration, adaptation and the literary process; he includes London writer friends such as Han Suyin, Assia Djabar and Judith Kazantzis and literary family friends in Karachi, such as Ahmed Ali and Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah.

Filmmaker, advertising executive and political figure, Javed Jabbar’s “But Prime Minister”: Interactions with Benazir Bhutto 1986–2000 the World’s First Muslim Woman Prime Minister focuses on his association with Benazir Bhutto who appointed him Minister of Information. The narrative includes Jabbar’s agreements and disagreements with party policy, rare personal insights into leading political figures and, later, his tenure in the cabinet of General Pervez Musharraf, including the draft policy which led to the expansion of electronic media in Pakistan.

The autobiography of the legendary Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan translated from Pashto by Imtiaz Ahmad Sahibzada as Bacha Khan: My Life and Struggle is a seamless, lucid narrative of great historical and literary importance as it moves across the early 20^th century from colonial rule to the 1947 Partition. Khan’s commitment to freedom, independence, modernity, social reform, the “Khudai Khidmatgars” he established and his engagement Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement are vividly recreated.

Syed Asad Anvery’s travel diary Before the Storm: Travels in Europe translated from Urdu by Rehana Alam is a rare account of a journey across Britain, Europe and the Middle East between April and August in 1939. Other translations of interest include Thinking with Ghalib by Anjum Altaf and Amit Basole, a selection of Ghalib’s couplets, printed in the Roman, Arabic and Devnagari scripts and accompanied by an informed interpretation in English aimed at a young Anglophone South Asian audience. The bilingual Musharraf Ali Farooqi, writer of Anglophone novels and translator of Urdu dastaans has now translated well known Urdu qissas Chhabili the Innkeeper and The Ingenious Farkhanda and the Two Conditions. It was also good to see Munshi Atta Muhammad Shikarpuri’s Taza Nawa’i Mu’arek: New Songs from the Battlefields — Sindh Afghan Conflicts (1747–1855 AD) translated from Sindhi by Suroosh Irfani and Dr Nabi Baksh Qazi and the collection of translations, essays and analysis by Noor Ahmed Jhanji, Fragrance of Thari Folk Songs. Feminist writing which captures the iniquities of a patriarchal society with great skill include Tahira Naqvi’s translation The Collector’s Chughtai, Amir Rizvi’s translations Living Stories: Selected Stories of Bushra Rehman and the anthology of women writers across generations Feminine Footprint in Literature ranging from Hijab Imtiaz Ali, Khadija Mastoor and Hajra Masroor to Bushra Rehman, Noorul Huda Shah and Perveen Malik.

The year’s significant anthologies included Womansplaining edited by Sherry Rahman, a testament and context to women’s activism in Pakistan through lived experience and the voice of pioneers; it probes, too, the connection between the 1980s women’s movement against General Zia’s notorious Hudood Ordinance and the subsequent post-millennium activism challenging patriarchy. Several essays have a strong historical trajectory which engages with issues such as women in parliament, feminist literary production, education and health. The contributors include leading activists, lawyers and writers ranging from Hina Jillani, Zohra Yusuf and Khawar Mumtaz to Sherry Rahman, Shahnaz Wazir Ali and Bina Shah.

The incisive Pakistan: Here and Now edited by Harris Khalique and Irfan Ahmad Khan sets out to explore “different aspects of life that delineate the dilemmas and contradictions faced by the contemporary Pakistani society [and] includes ideas on identity, gender, religion, politics and economy”. The book examines how Pakistan has evolved, which includes lessons unlearnt from the 1971 loss of East Pakistan, and the changing concepts of “Pakistani culture” from the inclusive rhetoric of Mohammed Ali Jinnah to the right-wing religious extremism espoused by many politicians today. Consisting of seven essays, each by well-known writers and academics (Hassan Zaidi, Salman Asif, Naveed Shahzad, Dr. Naazir Mahmood, Fatima Ihsan, Zahida Hina and Harris Khalique), the collection includes education, statecraft, social structures, sufism, representations in film, literature and music as well as the engagement of many diaspora Pakistanis in “resolving” Pakistan’s conflicts.

Culture and society permeate Dastarkhwan: Food Writing from Muslim South Asia (Indian title Desi Delicacies) edited by Claire Chambers. This consists of fiction and life writing about food from across the sub-continent, each piece leading up to a recipe. Chambers points out food is not merely nutrition or comfort but often central to memories of love and friendship and indeed rituals in Islam, including charity during the current pandemic. The Pakistani contributors include essays by Nadeem Aslam, Sanam Mehr and Sarvath Hasin and stories by Rosie Dastgir, Uzma Aslam Khan, Sophia Khan, Aamer Hussein and Sabiha Ahmed Hussain.

The year saw several important critical studies, including Epidemic Empire Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817–2020 by Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb, Curating Lived Islam in the Muslim World: British Scholars, Sojourners and Sleuths by Iftikhar H. Malik and Orientalism Post 9/11: Pakistani Anglophone Fiction in an Age of Terror by Faisal Nazir. Amorphous Lahore by Shahid Imtiaz looks at this multi-layered, multi-faceted city through a historical survey from ancient times to the present day and examines themes including politics, class, community, architecture and culture in Anglophone fiction. He begins with colonial times and compares representations of Lahore in Dina Nath’s The Two Friends: A Descriptive Story of the Lahore Life with Kipling’s Kim. He explores the portrayal of Partition and the population exchange in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man and The Bride; he goes on to discuss the postcolonial city through an analysis of Sidhwa’s The American Brat, Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days and Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, including the impact of political events such as the 1971 conflict, the right-wing Zia regime and the 1998 nuclear tests.

There was a diverse and extensive production of non-fiction, including the acclaimed political analyses of the distinguished journalists Zahid Hussain and Khaled Ahmed in Hybrid Rule in Pakistan and Pakistan’s Terror Conundrum, respectively. Rehman Anwer’s The Fundamentals of Sufism: Storytelling Myths and Clarifying Gender Stereotypes provides a slim, beginner’s guide to Sufism, its history and concepts. Two celebrated travel writers explore Sindh’s heritage: Salman Rashid’s Mithi: Whispers in the Sand tells of lost cities in the Thar Desert; Zulfiqar Kalhoro illuminates little known history in his two books, Wall Paintings of Sindh from the Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries and The Rock Art of Karachi. Poet, playwright, filmmaker, academic, Islamic scholar and leading figure in inter-faith dialogue, Akbar S. Ahmed looks at the past for answers to the fractious present in his new book, The Flying Man: Aristotle and the Philosophers of the Golden Age of Islam: Their Relevance Today, which focuses on intellectual discourses, public debates and rich exchange of ideas in the Islamic world which stretched from Bukhara to Spain across the 9^th to 13^th centuries. Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Averroes (Ibn Rushd), al-Ghazali, Maimonides, St Thomas Aquinas and Ibn Arabi are all discussed here, as is Avicenna’s concept of “a flying man”, a thought experiment on the nature of human existence and the soul. The influence of Greek philosophers and references to historical figures or writers are judiciously built in as are contemporary events. Ahmed devotes considerable space to links between the Abrahamic religions and includes a chapter challenging today’s Islamophobias. The academic Amineh Hoti also engages extensively in interfaith dialogues. Her book Gems and Jewels: The Religions of Pakistan provides unusual insights into Pakistan, with a chapter each on the ten religious communities that exist in the country, including Bahais, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Parsis and Sikhs. The historian Ali Raza illuminates little-known aspects of South Asia’s widespread pre-independence and left-wing movements in Revolutionary Pasts: Communist Internationalism in Colonial India, which incorporates the significance of anti-colonial Ghaddar party’s diaspora network from the United States and Argentina to Singapore, its encounter with Communist ideals following the Russian Revolution and the impact on the egalitarian nationalist movements in India. The book focuses on Punjabi activists, highlights the contact with the Soviet Union and the foment of ideas at the approach of Independence.

Journalist Samira Shackle’s book Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City brings togethers many aspects of Karachi through her interviews and portrayal of individuals living the city’s troubled areas. These include Safdar (an ambulance driver), Parween (a women’s lawyer from Lyari), Siraj (a development worker in Orangi), Jannat (a young woman and university student from Lal Baksh Kachelo Goth) and Zillie (a crime reporter originally from Landhi). Through their lives Shackle explores Karachi’s urban violence, political conflicts and state structures, from the 1992 military coup against the political party Muttahadi Qaumi Movement to the 2018 general election won by Imran Khan.

In literary journals there was an extensive engagement with Pakistan in Wasafiri’s special issue House of Wisdom: Libraries and Literatures in Islam edited by Rehana Ahmed and Nadia Atia; the co-editors refer to libraries in Islamic history as an egalitarian space, and the “interlacing of faith and artistic cultures” which “challenges the false dichotomy created in perceptions of Islam as antithetical to art and intellectual curiosity”. The Pakistan-related work ranged from Ahmed’s analysis “Archiving Islam in Nadeem Aslam’s Libraries” and Rachel Gregory Fox’s “‘Representing Anything Limits You, Makes You Smaller’: A Conversation with Ahdaf Soueif and Kamila Shamsie” to Bina Shah’s story “The Book Smuggler”, the poems “Prayer” by Zaffar Kunial and “The Library in Lahore” by Moniza Alvi.

While Sangam House’s special issue Pakistani Anglophone Poetry guest edited by Makhdoom Ammar Aziz includes poetry by Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Raza Ali Hassan, Adrian A. Husain, Waqas Khwaja, Athar Tahir and Afshan Shafi among others. The Journal of Contemporary Poetics included Muneeza Shamsie’s memoir essay “Reading, Writing, Living in an Era of Pandemics”, Muhammed Safdar’s “Gender and Environment: Predicament of Tribal Women of Pakistan in Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon”, Saadia Neelam Ali’s “Bio-colonial Co-optation of Knowledge: An Eco-Imperialist Investigation of Anita Desai’s A Village by the Sea and Uzma Aslam Khan’s Thinner Than Skin” and Aamer Hussein and Ali Akbar’s “May Our Love Not Be Centred on Ourselves: A Dialogue”.

Among online journals, The Prelude continues its strong literary focus, including — in 2021 — articles on Anglophone women writings, interviews with Osama Siddique and Muneeza Shamsie, poetry by Nadia Anwar, Aurangzeb Wattoo and Shahid Imtiaz. The literature and arts magazine Aleph continues with videos, articles, interviews, creative writing and art in its online edition. Aleph’s much praised, annual print edition includes Aasim Akhtar on cartoonist Vai Ell, fiction by Osman Haneef, Taha Kehar and Anita Mir among others as well as lively memoir essays by Hanif Kureishi, Shazaf Fatima, Shahzia Gardezi and Saba Karim, a cartoon by Sheherbano Husain presenting art work as a parody, a wide range of poems by Pakistani and international writers and a qissa translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. The literary supplements of the Pakistani newspapers The News International: Literati and Dawn: Eos: Books and Authors continued to make an important contribution with the latter’s focus on book reviews supplemented with columns by leading writers Claire Chambers, Mehr Afshan Farooqi, Zulfikar Ghose, Nomanul Haq, Aamer Hussein and Harris Khalique; it was also good to see extracts from novels as well as the Zeenat Haroon Rashid Prize winner included as leading stories in Dawn’s main magazine Eos.

From this it may be surmised that 2021 continued to be very productive for Pakistani English poetry, fiction and non-fiction with a growing number of debut writers, important translations, critical studies, special issues and excellent special issues and online resources. The only exception was the glaring paucity of drama.

The year saw many losses: short story writer, translator, journalist and editor Masood Ashar (the pen name of Masood Ahmed Khan b.1931); novelist, poet, broadcaster Zaitoon Bano (b.1938); poet Zahir Dar (b.1936); writer, activist and journalist Sheen Farrukh (b.1938); journalist and diplomat Wajid Shamsul Hasan (b.1941); television playwright and medical doctor Dennis Isaac (b.1950); journalist Moniza Inam (b.1963); playwright and screenwriter Haseena Moin (b.1941); journalist and editor Arif Nizami (b.1948); journalist and human rights activist I.A. Rehman (b.1930); scholar and thinker Dr. Agha Khalid Saeed (b.1948); fiction writer Shaukat Shoro (b.1947) and poet Naseer Turabi (b.1945). They are deeply mourned.