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Nov 7, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja
‘Broken Threads’ is a riveting history of British television news anchor Mishal Husain's family before and after the Partition. Born in England to a father who had come to work for the National Health Service (NHS) and a mother who had followed suit, Mishal says she became conscious of the deep roots of her English friends at boarding school and realised she had no such roots of her own. Her parents were part of an expatriate community.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja
Adam Shatz's The Rebel’s Clinic, The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon has been longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize 2024. It is no surprise because as I was discussing over dinner with my father, who read and finished this brick of a book before me, it is less of a reader-friendly novel and more of a research project, although excellently written.
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Aug 10, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja
Book: Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel Author: Edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston Publisher: HarperCollins, 2024 The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was a unique experience for the world. And where there are unique experiences, there are stories, or at least the makings of some intriguing stories.
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Jul 22, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja
Teenage is a magical time for any adolescent. It's a time of great transformation, of boys and girls evolving into pre-adults and discovering a whole new set of feelings, capabilities, and even a perspective of the world. Kelly Link's book encapsulates this period with a generous helping of vivid and creative imagination that would be quite at home in the streaming series Locke & Key.
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Jul 13, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja |Kamran Khamiso Khowaja |Sabih Ul Hussnain |Raza Rumi
With Pakistan struggling economically while a population bomb goes off inside its borders, the country needs to urgently adopt alternative and practical solutions to contain this growing threat. A cogent and practical solution to this problem was presented by an advocacy and policy platform in Lahore the other day.
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Jul 6, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Ahsen Khan |Umer Farooq |Meezan Zahra Khwaja |Tariq Aqil
Having discussed what truths the war in Gaza reveals about America, it is now time to consider what it has shown us about the Muslim world. Here, the lesson is simple and has been painfully obvious for a long time. The Muslim world is incredibly weak. Not one of the 57 Muslim nations had the power to stop Israel from murdering Gaza’s defenseless people. Over 14,000 Palestinian children have died so far.
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Jun 25, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja |Farida Gul |Raza Rumi |Adeel Daniel
“Maktub” means “it is written” in Arabic and is a book by Paulo Coelho formed out of a series of stories that he wrote as a daily column for the Folha de São Paulo and the Manual of the Warrior of Light. Coelho says the book may be read as a companion to his famous work The Alchemist. The stories are deep, thought-provoking and spiritual – and Margaret Jull Costa has translated them exquisitely. Each one has a specific purpose and meaning to exchange life’s experience and touch the human heart.
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Jun 10, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Tariq Aqil |Meezan Zahra Khwaja |Huma Ijaz Zaman |Ahmad Faruqui
The ongoing civil war in Yemen has dragged on for over ten years now and the Ansar Allah forces, commonly known as Houthis, are one of the two main factions in this conflict. The Houthis are in firm control of the western part of the country, including the capital city Sana. The Houthis are part of the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” a network of Iran-aligned militant groups around the Middle East.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Ahmad Faruqui |Meezan Zahra Khwaja |Junaid Jahangir |Tariq Aqil
Right after 7 October, President Biden made it a point to visit Prime Minister Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, becoming the first US president to visit Israel in wartime. Biden told Netanyahu that he was standing next to him not just as a US president but as a Christian Zionist. He condemned what Hamas had done, calling it the worst calamity to hit the Jews since the Holocaust. Biden counselled Bibi to not act emotionally, like the US had after 9/11. He cautioned Netanyahu not to invade Gaza.
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Jun 3, 2024 | 
thefridaytimes.com | Meezan Zahra Khwaja |Tariq Aqil |Beelam Ramzan |Bilal Hyder Simair
We are all currently witnessing the genocide taking place in Palestine – mass murder, carnage, starvation and utter hopelessness. Under these circumstances you might be wondering how it is even possible to talk of a one-state solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict – much less advise it in detail. The authors in this book, however, mostly beg to disagree and think that the one-state solution is not only possible but for some of them, it remains the only viable option.
