Literature - 4

Born in Pakistan in 1966, Mr. Aslam came to England as a teenager when his father, a poet, filmmaker and communist, fled to escape political persecution after Gen. Zia’s takeover. The family landed in a working-class section of Huddersfield in northern England, a provincial backwater, uncelebrated and unsung, a place that might be described as [...]

The Urdu typewriter used by legendary Urdu short-story writer Saadat Hasan Manto has been donated to Govt. College Lahore. … this historical typewriter used by two most important literary legends of Urdu literature would be put on display at the Govt. College Lahore. During his controversial two-decade career, the leading Urdu short-story writer of the [...]

The story of “We are the light of the world,” is based on Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poem that he wrote as a gesture of solidarity with the women of the world who were meeting at UN forum in Mexico City in 1975. With dramatic narration and impressions of girls who have undergone skill training through [...]

The road on which Koocha-i-Saqafat was held was divided into three parts. Those who came from the Arts Council roundabout first entered the art centre where paintings, specimen of calligraphy and sculptures were on display. The second section of Koocha-i-Saqafat comprised a book bazaar where a few booksellers offered huge discounts – up to 33 [...]

For love-struck teenagers, newlyweds trying to conceive their first baby or lonely singles hoping to find the perfect mate, there’s only one place in Pakistan to seek help. They come to a hilltop surrounded by a simple dirt cemetery, to the shrine of Heer and Ranjha – the Romeo and Juliet of South Asia. Although [...]

The first volume of Alhamra Literary Review is a successful attempt to break the silence of people who are inhibited or reluctant about expressing themselves and publishing their works. This unique collection of unpublished English writings by individuals both young and old is a refreshing blend of creative expressions in the form of poetry, fiction, [...]

One day Ayesha Solangi, a local counselor decided she wanted to read and write and enrolled herself in an adult literacy programme run by a non-government organisation in her town in Sanghar, a district some 250 kilometers from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi. In a country where the female adult literacy rate is only [...]

A Pakistani newspaper vendor in Paris with a unique selling style has won a book deal to have his life story published. Ali Akbar, who sells copies of Le Monde on the streets of the French capital’s fashionable St Germain des Pres district, arrived in the country as an illegal immigrant more than 30 years [...]

A novel hailed as finding “shimmering love” among the bigotries and injustices of the Asian area of an English town yesterday won a share of a £16,000 international literary prize. Maps for Lost Lovers, which took Nadeem Aslam 11 years to write, was declared in San Francisco as joint winner of the annual Kiriyama award, [...]

Perhaps, Faiz Ahmad Faiz was more near to our times the interpretation was carried out in the reverse order with Russian scholar Ludmila Vasileva saying Faiz was doubtless in love with the Russian Revolution he believed Russia could usher in a new world for the poor and wretched of this earth. Thus, he spent considerable [...]