Adil Najam
We at ATP like books. Over the last many months we have featured and discussed a number of books that relate to Pakistan in various ways.
I must confess that I had always hoped that we would talk more about books than we have. I hope we will be able to do so in the future. As a step towards that goal, we would like to invite our readers to share with us your suggestions of books on Pakistan that are worth reading.
This is not a popularity contest. We have no awards to give. We merely want to collate a list of books on Pakistan that people consider to be interesting reads. Specially those that you would consider recommending to others for whatever reason.
We have only two criteria:
- First, that the books you suggest must be about Pakistan, and significantly so. We, of course, realize that many Pakistanis read many books that are not about Pakistan, but the focus of this blog is not only on ‘All’ Things Pakistan, but also ‘Only’ things about Pakistan.
- Second, for the purpose of this first exercise please restrict your suggestions to books in the English language. This is a pragmatic, and not an ideological, criteria. The universe of books in Urdu is much larger - especially when one includes works of fiction and poetry - and hopefully we will have a separate exercise on those. For now, we wish to start small by focusing only on English language books.
The plan right now is to make this post and list a standing feature and to keep adding to it as readers share their suggestions and ideas. Hopefully this will be a useful service to those interested in Pakistan and Pakistaniat.
Waiting for Allah by Christina Lamb is a great account of the days following the death of Zia and the accesssion of Benazir Bhutto
ONE WAY TO PAKISTAN, eye-opening novel about police extortion and abduction by Harold Bergsma wins Indie Excellence multi-cultural writing award for 2007.
There are many:
My Feudal Lord
Blasphemy
- both by Tehmina Durrani
Then there is
Salt and Saffron
Kartography
- both by Kamila Shamsi
‘Taboo’ which is about Diamond Market, forgot the author.
this indeed is an useful blog. as an army officer, i ve read many books, which were about
Pakistan in general and army in particular. following is the list with one line/word
comments:-
1. witness to surrender - Sadiq Salik - 71 war
2. Tragedy of errors - Kamal Matinud din - 71 war
3. Incomplete partiton - alstair Lamb - Partition of subcontinent & instrument of
annexation of Kashmir
4. The way it was - Brig (R) Zahir alam Khan - An autobiography/ story of wars etc
5. unlikely Beginings _ Maj Gen (R) AO Mitha - Autobiography/ wars etc
6. In the Line of Fire - President Pervez Musharaf - Autobiogrpahy
thats all uptill April 2007. more to go incls Daughter of the east - new edition and a book
based on Ayub khan’s diaries.anyone having e book of daughter of the east? info me on
faisal8hak@gmail.com please
Very good selection of books. I also think that you should have a seperate page for book reccomendations and make different lists on it.
‘Daughter of the East’ by the ever-exiled Benazir Bhutto.
Your readers may enjoy a new suspense fiction called ONE WAY TO PAKISTAN by an expatriate gora who grew up in the NWFP. See Amazon books for reader comments as well as the “Look inside” section for content and style.
Another good one that no one mentioned so far is “My Feudal Lord” by Tehmina Durrani. She is ex-wife of Mustafa Khar - hard to put down once you get going with it. Well written, scandalous, insightful of Pakistani upper-class, feudal/political culture.