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Nov 9, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Muhammad Amir Rana |Abbas Nasir
Since my last column about Saadat Hasan Manto’s story ‘Tamasha’, I came across his sketch ‘Hindi Aur Urdu’ (1954). Then I read Firaq Gorakhpuri’s ‘The Hindi-Urdu Issue.’ I encountered new ideas about these languages, both of which I’m learning. In Mirza Ghalib’s day, Urdu and Hindi were often seen as interchangeable. While implicit divisions existed, these began to congeal after 1857.
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Sep 8, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Abbas Nasir |Zoya Anwer |Muhammad Amir Rana
Last time I wrote about learning Urdu, with a special focus on Ismat Chughtai’s writing. For me, 2024 has been the year of translation. After nearly a half-decade of work, I can now read the originals of previously out-of-reach texts. I’ve been thinking about translation as political praxis. With the sociologist Ipek Demir, in May I brought out an edited collection, Translation and Decolonisation: Interdisciplinary Approaches.
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Jul 6, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Syed Ahsan |Abbas Nasir |Muhammad Amir Rana
Since March 2020, I have been making a concerted effort to learn Urdu. Recently, I took GCSE exams in this beautiful, expressive language. Depending on my result, I aim to pursue an A-level next. As part of this mission, I meet various friends online each week to read stories from the Rekhta website. I find colloquial Urdu more fun to engage with than the intimidating formal version. Ismat Chughtai’s chatty writing has thus become a firm favourite.
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Mar 13, 2024 | 
medium.com | Claire Chambers
“What is this life, if full of care, We have no time to stand and stare…”In our fast-paced and busy lives, the need for stillness is crucial. Taking moments of quiet and calm allows us to recharge, reflect, and find clarity. It is during these moments that we can truly connect with ourselves and gain a deeper understanding of our thoughts and emotions. Embracing moments of quiet and calm can help reduce stress, improve focus, and promote well-being.
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Mar 2, 2024 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Asfa Sultan |Navaira Ali Bangash |Abbas Nasir
This year marks the 100th anniversary of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. When he published the novel in 1924, it was famously thought the sun would never set on the British Empire. Yet the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had happened just five years earlier. Such bloodshed undermined Britain’s so-called civilising mission in India. Appalled by the massacre, nationalist leaders increasingly believed that the only way forward was complete British withdrawal.
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Dec 30, 2023 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Mahira Sarfraz |Muhammad Fahim Khokhar |Abbas Nasir
In a literary marketplace saturated with Eurocentric accounts of motherhood, Suma Din’s creative non-fiction work, Dear Mother: Letters from the Heart, is a refreshing collection. Made up of imagined letters, the book explores the challenges and rewards of motherhood from within an Islamic framework. In terms of its genre, Dear Mother is a blend of self-help, life writing and fiction.
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Oct 28, 2023 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Tariq Khosa |Abbas Nasir |Muna Khan
Karachi-born Farah Ali is the author of the short story collection People Want to Live (McSweeney’s, 2021). That book is being followed this month by the publication of her debut novel The River, The Town by Dzanc, another American indie press. In unadorned prose that interconnects stark realism with a suggestion of the mythic, Ali’s novel is a meditation on poverty, sick bodies, and love in the era of climate catastrophe.
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Oct 23, 2023 | 
pdf2html.opoint.com | Claire Chambers
October 23, 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2023 AWP Award Series Winners Announced Norfolk, VA —The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is proud to announce the winners of the 2023 AWP Award Series, an annual competition for the publication of excellent new book-length works. The prizes are supported by the AWP Award Series Endowments.
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Aug 26, 2023 | 
dawn.com | Claire Chambers |Muzhira Amin |Parvez Hassan |Abbas Nasir
Amitav Ghosh’s latest work, a nonfiction book titled Smoke and Ashes, was published in India this July. Being in New Delhi at the time, I was fortunate to buy the volume and attend his launch-lecture. Ghosh’s book investigates the interplay between plants and humans. It explores the profound impact this has had on India’s and China’s colonial histories, and on the USA’s present-day opioid crisis.
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Jul 18, 2023 | 
hyphenonline.com | Claire Chambers
Flat lands, like the tidal areas of Morecambe Bay or the Scottish Orkney archipelago, can feel both boundless and constraining. British author Noreen Masud originally wanted to write about these environments because of a memory from her youth in Pakistan. This childhood in Lahore was deeply unhappy, as her controlling doctor father kept his British wife and their four daughters largely confined to their home. The girls were only allowed out to attend school.
