Our essential reads for the week
This year’s Women’s Prize winner fills an important gap in contemporary histories of Afghanistan, but leaves the reader hankering for a world capacious enough to hold Afghan voices telling their own stories
The delivery app has fundamentally altered how people eat
Our editors, contributors and staff share the books they’re looking forward to reading this summer.
The World Cup has turned into a bonanza of capitalist excess. What keeps us watching still?
Abu Aleeha's serial-killer drama owes more to censorship than to cinema
The daily horrors that animate the interior lives of women find themselves externalised as the uncanny
This year’s Women’s Prize winner fills an important gap in contemporary histories of Afghanistan, but leaves the reader...
The daily horrors that animate the interior lives of women find themselves externalised as the uncanny
The political imaginaries of Iran’s most lauded literary voices in the West
Dalrymple reframes ‘Partition’ as the proper noun in the South Asian imaginary into a verb
At the center of Mina Malik’s 𝘙𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘵 is a woman who, cleansed by grief and anger, can finally see clearly
Leftist intellectuals and the creator of Ainak Wala Jin have more in common than we may assume
When enshittification comes for your favourite bookstore
Witches continue to inspire literary imaginations, whether in the form of supernatural entities (with or without cauldro...
By Saba Imtiaz
By Umair Javed
By Maryam Jillani
By Haroon Sethi
By Manahil Tahira
Stories, Cultures, and Landscapes
Reflecting on the Zeitgeist
A seventy-year old photo of Ava Gardner, darling of the Golden Age of Hollywood, standing on a railway platform with a crowd of South Asian men and women behind her, often does the rounds on social media accounts that look back at the ‘good old days’. The story behind the photo, though, is one of exploitation and racist filmmaking. Aqeel Ahmad takes a look at Bhowani Junction, the 1956 film that brought Hollywood stars to Lahore.
Jun 12, 2026
While the 7-day Okara-Sahiwal war of 2026 did not happen, it did not stop millions of viewers from engaging with, and enjoying, the incident.
Jun 12, 2026
A seventy-year old photo of Ava Gardner, darling of the Golden Age of Hollywood, standing on a railway platform with a crowd of South Asian men and women behind her, often does the rounds on social media accounts that look back at the ‘good old days’. The story behind the photo, though, is one of exploitation and racist filmmaking. Aqeel Ahmad takes a look at Bhowani Junction, the 1956 film that brought Hollywood stars to Lahore.
Jun 12, 2026
While the 7-day Okara-Sahiwal war of 2026 did not happen, it did not stop millions of viewers from engaging with, and enjoying, the incident.
Jun 12, 2026
What happens when it’s your parents’ dream home being realised (and their life savings spent) and you’re the default project manager?
The most highly anticipated event of the year — Basant — has kicked off in Lahore. Rooftops are booked and set up, the kite trade is booming and you can feel the city pulsating with excitement. But are we chasing a nostalgic dream? Or will Basant be the same vibrant, communal activity most remember? Aiman Tahir Khan looks at the history of Basant, as the colourful kite-flying festival returns to Lahore after almost two decades.
Millennial women, especially those wanting to be mothers, were once promised they could have it all: a solid career, a perfect family and enough time to spare to work on their own selves. So why is it that millennial women, especially mothers, are constantly exhausted and burnt out?
In Pakistan, as in many parts of the globe, patriarchy has made the experience of being a woman a taxing and lonely one. In an age of cyber harassment and continued gender-based violence in the online and offline world, one writer finds solace in the uplifting work of other women.
SPORTS
Luka Modrić redefined the art of football in a way few players have.
SPORTS
A FIFA World Cup classic that should have belonged to Egypt, but was claimed by Messi.
At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, the European Union and its leading member states were no longer willing to quietly acquiesce to Washington’s demands under President Donald Trump.
Trump’s interest in Greenland is not new. During his first term, his suggestion that the United States should ‘buy’ Greenland was widely mocked, dismissed as a diplomatic oddity. Ahmad Jamal Wattoo looks at the strategic logic beneath the spectacle.
Debt-for-climate swaps are no longer boutique transactions, but are being pitched as a central tool to help countries break free from the vicious cycle of debt distress and climate vulnerability. Can the G77+China succeed in making them more than symbolic, clever deals on the margins?
