Manahil Tahira

Mar 06, 2026

This Is Where the Serpent Lives strives for scope but reduces class and gender to the familiar

Shanzay Asim

Mar 04, 2026

Fatima Bhutto’s highly anticipated memoir, The Hour of The Wolf (Granta, 2026), is ostensibly a powerful memoir of grief, love and heartbreak. For Shanzay Asim, who read it in the company of her own cats, Yoko and Tintin, it also reads as validation for the devotion to her own pets. Moving from an unconditional love of (and from) a pet, Bhutto’s Jack Russell Terrier, Coco, to the toxic love of a narcissist, the memoir is a forensic examination of how we can survive the wreckage of human cruelty by clinging to the purity of animal devotion.

Nida Bano Qureshi

Feb 17, 2026

Anissa Helou is a London-based chef, teacher and author who specialises in cooking and writing recipes for Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African cuisines. Following a conversation with Helou at the recent Lahore Literary Festival Nida Bano Qureshi dives into the award winning chef’s work, her latest book, 𝘓𝘦𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯: 𝘊𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘺 𝘏𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥, and how our plates reveal connection where politics insists on division.

Dur e Aziz Amna

Feb 04, 2026

When a major Pakistani political figure is hanged, OK Town erupts in protest. A few miles away, Sir Baghi is surprised by a knock at the door of his language school, the Rebel English Academy. Mohammed Hanif’s latest offering is a tale of interconnected characters that face a changing landscape with violence, passion and sharp humour. Dur e Aziz Amna, author of 𝘈 𝘚𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘍𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘧’𝘴 𝘙𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘭 𝘌𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘈𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘺.

Furqan Ali

Jan 27, 2026

‘𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺: 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘈𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩’ by Uzair Younus wonders if instead of a collapse, we are on the brink of an era of abundance. The author challenges conventional narratives of stagnation and decline, arguing that emerging technologies are not just transforming industries, but redefining how societies in the Global South can eliminate the scarcity of energy, capital and productivity that has held them back for centuries. Furqan Ali takes a closer look at this claim.

Ayza Khan

Jan 21, 2026

In Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys (2025), Argentine journalist and novelist Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre, as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history.

Rana Saadullah Khan

Jan 13, 2026

𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶 by Fauzia Rafique, translated from the Punjabi by Haider Shahbaz (2025), follows Muhammad Hussain Khan ‘𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶’ who has escaped Pakistan and lives in Vancouver, running a small business. For Rana Saadullah Khan the novel’s utopic imagination (depictions of the Punjab, of discrimination, of diasporic yearnings or lack thereof) draws such a neat dividing line between the lands in which horrors can occur and where dreams come to fruition that it makes one hesitant to celebrate 𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶 and its acts of hope.

Mina Malik

Jan 01, 2026

Maha Khan Phillips takes us on a whirlwind, absorbing adventure in her fourth novel, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘮 𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦.

Saba Imtiaz

Dec 29, 2025

Following the 25th publication anniversary of Kamila Shamsie’s novel ‘Salt and Saffron’, Saba Imtiaz muses over how well it has held up in its observations of a city that has decimated and patched itself several times over in the past 25 years.

Iman Iftikhar

Dec 26, 2025

The 2025 Booker Prize went to David Szalay for Flesh, his novel depicting the classic ‘man-of-few-words’ adapted for the 21st century. What is it about a brooding male hero, victim to primitivity and the pressures of the economy, that makes everyone yearn though? Must we always be left wanting of men?

Rana Saadullah Khan

Dec 18, 2025

Zeenat Hisam’s Tamannaon Ke Deyaar Se is an anthology of translated poems from North American women poets. Rana Saadullah Khan wonders why the translations have not found a wider audience and muses on Perveen Shakir’s enduring influence on Urdu literary creatives.

Rana Saadullah Khan

Nov 26, 2025

Rabih Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja The Gullible (and His Mother) recently became the first Arab-American work to receive a National Book Award in Fiction. The decades-spanning novel tells the story of a singular life and its absurdities. Rana Saadullah Khan dives into Alameddine’s tragicomic world.

Rutaba Tanvir

Nov 26, 2025

Lahore in Motion: Infrastructure, History and Belonging in Urban Pakistan (UCL Press, 2025), edited by Ammara Maqsood, Chris Moffat and Fizza Sajjad, is an ambitious anthology of 26 essays, each dedicated to one stop of the Orange Line Metro. Rutaba Tanvir ponders on the book’s premise after being part of a tour organised to critically analyse the Orange Line and its place in urban Lahore.

Risham Amjad

Nov 25, 2025

In Adrian A. Husain’s second collection of sonnets, Knife of the Tide (The Peepul Press, 2025), recollection is not merely what survives; it is what mutates. Poet Risham Amjad reviews the sonnets.

Madeeha Maqbool

Nov 20, 2025

Georgette Heyer, writing between the 1920s and 1970s, may in fact have invented the ‘Regency Romance’ sub-genre. What sets her books apart is the level of historical research and well-rounded characters not often found in contemporary bodice-rippers that we get in the name of this genre.

Mina Malik

Nov 13, 2025

Mahreen Sohail’s debut book, 𝘚𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴 (A Public Space, 2025), is a collection of short stories that can only be described as deft, surprising and satisfyingly horrible.

Furqan Ali

Oct 31, 2025

In a country plagued with literacy problems and lack of institutional support, can book reviewers be the catalysts in nudging a dormant culture of critical reading back into motion?

Shanzay Asim

Oct 31, 2025

Mother Mary Comes To Me by acclaimed author and activist Arundhati Roy is not just a memoir about a complicated mother — it’s the origin story of a voice that shaped a generation.

Ammar Yasir

Oct 29, 2025

How many selves must one carry to be seen as one? Ammar Yasir explores the central conceit behind a lesser-known Dostoevsky, The Double, and reading it in our current times.

Rana Saadullah Khan

Oct 27, 2025

Arundhati Roy’s latest offering, Mother Mary Comes To Me, is an unflinching look at a difficult childhood and a fraught mother-daughter relationship, and its effects on a life lived in service of truth and justice. But, the author wonders if this memoir is a “safe” version of a trailblazing, resistant life.

Taha Ali

Oct 20, 2025

Picking up George Orwell’s 𝟭𝟵𝟴𝟰 as an adult, Taha Ali finds the book to be a revelation. Could it be because this nightmarish vision seems a lot closer today?

Iman Iftikhar

Sep 01, 2025

In 𝘈 𝘚𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, Dur e Aziz Amna’s second novel, she writes about Tara, a woman who, like her name, is chasing a star or trying to become one.

Haroon Ashraf

Aug 29, 2025

Noor Junejo’s novel 𝘔𝘶𝘩𝘢𝘻𝘻𝘢𝘣 𝘞𝘦𝘩𝘴𝘩𝘪 translated into Urdu from the Sindhi is a philosophical text that holds you till the last page.

Fizzah Sajjad

Jul 21, 2025

In September 2012, over 250 workers perished in a fire at Ali Enterprises, a garment factory in Karachi working for a German retailer. Was this arson or an accident? Laurent Gayer’s ‘Gunpoint Capitalism: Enforcing Industrial Order in Karachi’ takes this tragedy to take a probing look at a culture of industrial order through force in Karachi.

Rana Saadullah Khan

Jul 18, 2025

Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird (translated by Asa Yoneda, and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025) captured the public imagination with its post-apocalyptic narrative of a future depicting humanity’s precarious survival. But is this yet another in a long line of hyped spec-fic works translated from the Japanese, or does it offer greater insight into the genre?

Nazuk Iftikhar Rao

Jul 02, 2025

‘What is and was Lahore? How has it changed in its thirteen disruptions?’ These are among the many questions that flaneur-historian Dr Manan Ahmed Asif explores in his book ‘Disrupted City’.

Rana Saadullah Khan

Jun 14, 2025

Satire aims to provoke, but does Percival Everett’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel go far enough?

Rana Saadullah Khan

May 12, 2025

𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘓𝘢𝘮𝘱, the first ever book translated from Kannada shortlisted by the International Booker Prize, is a collection of short stories not bothered with defining and diagnosing the problems of the nation at large, but with the minutiae, with domestic squabbles, with very peculiar anxieties

Mina Malik

May 12, 2025

The UK-based Pakistani author’s most recent novel A Woman on a Suitcase revisits marriage and the end of it

Zoya Mirza

May 12, 2025

In our increasingly media-saturated landscape, in thrall of an attention economy that strategizes attracting eyeballs and maximizing clicks per second, A Flat Place reveres and reaffirms the power of quiet observation.

Iman Iftikhar

Apr 21, 2025

Nobel Prize Winner Han Kang’s oeuvre may be celebrated due to her status as a novelist “for the times”, but what separates her work from the rest is her filial devotion to other humans, especially women

Madeeha Maqbool

Mar 05, 2025

A book that purports to fact-check the oeuvre and credibility of two Indian writers may very well be in need of fact-checking itself

Mina Malik

Mar 01, 2025

Sarwari lays it all bare in this clear-eyed memoir about the trials of her marriage, within which the lines between mother, partner, caregiver devolved into a messy blur

Hera Naguib

Jan 27, 2025

Abu Toha, who has emerged as a significant voice during the genocide of his people, has written a harrowing testament to the interminable slaughter of Palestinians, and yet his poetry is also a fervent reclamation of Palestinian life

Rafia Asim

Jan 14, 2025

Orbital, the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, invites us to explore our fragility as human beings and bear witness to the wondrous planet we call home.

Mina Malik

Jan 13, 2025

Imtiaz and Masood-Khan have not only painstakingly recreated the Mustafa Zaidi murder case in their book Society Girl, but also the social milieu of Karachi and Lahore in the 70s

Taha Kehar

Jan 12, 2025

The intricately plotted novel departs from the usual preoccupations and motifs of a Partition novel, and offers the reader something new

Madeeha Maqbool

Jan 11, 2025

The book is a love letter to ancient Indian civilisations, but fails to consider its India’s current Saffron-saturated context

Mariam Tareen

Jan 10, 2025

Book Review: Other Names For Love By Taymour Soomro