7 Best Pakistani Books To Read in English
Despite its short and turbulent history, Pakistan is blessed with fabulous writers, who have produced many stunning literary works. Enjoy 7 Best Pakistani Books To Read in English.
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7 Best Pakistani Books To Read in English
Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid
In Lahore, Daru Shezad is a junior banker with a hashish habit. When his old friend Ozi moves back to Pakistan, Daru wants to be happy for him. Ozi has everything: a beautiful wife and child, an expensive foreign education – and a corrupt father who bankrolls his lavish lifestyle. As jealousy sets in, Daru’s life slowly unravels. He loses his job. Starts lacing his joints with heroin. Becomes involved with a criminally-minded rickshaw driver. And falls in love with Ozi’s lonely wife. But how low can Daru sink? Is he guilty of the crime he finds himself on trial for?
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
Isma is free.
After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, Parvaiz is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs.
As the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation?
The Golden Legend by Nadeem Aslam
For weeks, someone has been broadcasting people’s secrets from the minarets of the city’s mosques, striking fear into the hearts of Christians and Muslims alike. Then when shots ring out on the Grand Trunk Road, and Nargis’s husband, Massud, a fellow architect, is caught in the crossfire, she is unable to confess to him her greatest secret before he dies. But as the anonymous broadcasts continue, is it merely a matter of time before her past is exposed? The Golden Legend is a timely and luminous story of corruption, resilience and the hope that only love and the human spirit can offer.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
There is an old saying that when lovers fall out, a plane goes down. This is the story of one such plane.
Why did a Hercules C130, the world’s sturdiest plane, carrying Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia ul Haq, go down on 17 August, 1988? Was it because of:
1.Mechanical failure
2.Human error
3.The CIA’s impatience
4.A blind woman’s curse
5.Generals not happy with their pension plans
6.The mango season
Or could it be your narrator, Ali Shigri?
Water by Bapsi Sidhwa
Set in 1938, against the backdrop of Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, abandoned at a widow’s ashram after the death of her elderly husband. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in the widows’ lives.
When her friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow-prostitute, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the ashram’s delicate balance of power. This riveting look at the lives of widows in colonial India is ultimately a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith, and redemption.
Mottled Dawn By Saadat Hasan Manto
Many of us know how the partition of India and Pakistan came about. However, there are several other stories that took place during that time that we need to be aware of. There are several tragedies which have not received as much importance as the partition itself.
The book is a collection of unforgettable stories put together as Saadat Hasan Manto s most powerful pieces. It is based on the Partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in the year 1947. The book contains many stories like Toba Tek Singh, The Return, The Assignment, Colder Than Ice and many more. All these stories come alive to put forward the most tragic events in the history of the subcontinent.
Little America by Zain Saeed
Born in a Karachi slum, Sharif Barkati became obsessed with “American” ideas of love and freedom at a very young age. He began to dream of a public place in the city that did not follow the rules, where people would be free to say and do whatever they wanted under open skies, away from the conservative eyes of Pakistani society. With the help of his friend Afzal – and TJ, an extremely wealthy Pakistani-American – Sharif was able to realize his dream in the form of a colossal compound on the Karachi coast, full of bars, cafes, clubs, and the people of Karachi strolling about, hand in hand. They called it Little America.
Now in prison, Sharif tells the story of his life in a letter to his favorite novelist, hoping that he will turn it into a literary masterpiece. At once a rollicking journey around the mind of a man desperate to be free, an allegory of the neocolonial endeavour, and an investigation of the desire to emulate the perceived superior while desperately trying to hold on to one’s own cultural identity, Little America asks the question: What, really, is freedom, and what can be sacrificed in its name?.
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