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.
Thanks to all who have been suggesting books. Some great suggestions here.
I just want to highlight that,
(a) the books featured here are not necessarily our list of favorites, it is merely the ones that have been variously featured on ATP before;
(b) our plan is to take the new recomendations coming here and add them to a running list for future reference.
[quote comment=”36604″]Can anyone recommend a neutral book on Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto?[/quote]
Stanley Wolpert’s biography of Bhutto is a great read and very balanced. I would highly recommend it.
Great post. There are so many books in my list (including 5 in the list up there) that its impossible to pick one or two. But let me add one of my all time favourites. Lahore – A Sentimental Journey by Pran Nevile. This book was first published in 1997 and really deserves wide readership. Its a beautifully written piece of social history and very few people that I know have read it.
It’s about my beloved Lahore. Ruled by Hindu Kings, Mughul emperors, Sikh monarchs, and British sovereigns, Lahore boasts a historical mix like none other. I bought it from Maqbool Academy located in Diyal Singh Mansion Lahore but I am sure it is available online too. Pran Nevile a Lahori himself says, “a city is not merely its bazaars and buildings. It is its atmosphere, ambience, moods of joy and sorrow, madness and sadness, fun and excitement and above all its people who constitute its soul.”
I also mentioned this book long time ago in one of my posts here
On a side note, anyone knows if there has been a book published, a photo book with history may be, about non-muslim architecture of Pakistan (interior sindh, karachi, lahore in particular)?
Great Collection. Can all of these books be produced as Audio books that can be consumed as digital capsules.
The following list was written mostly in the 1990s, and can be very useful for those of us who were too young to understand/follow the political and economic issues in detail in those days. These publications contain some important details that are often missing in books giving 50-60 year overviews of Pakistan’s history. Since they were written earlier, they are less loaded with hind sight and contain assessments of the issues during the Bhutto, Zia and post-Zia periods when these governments were either in power or had just been ousted.
1. Pakistan Under Bhutto
Shahid Javed Burki, 1980
2. Pakistan under the Military: Eleven Years of Zia Ul-Haq.
Authors: Kamal Azfar, Craig Baxter, Shahid Javed Burki, Robert Laporte Jr.
Westview Press, 1991.
3. Contemporary Problems of Pakistan.
J. Henry Korson -editor,
Westview Press, 1993.
The following were written as a series of biennial assessments of contemporary events and issues in Pakistan affairs during the 1990s (I don’t know whether they continued the series after 1997).
4. Pakistan: 1992
Charles H. Kennedy, ed,
Westview Press, 1993.
5. Pakistan: 1995.
Contributors: Charles H. Kennedy, Rasul Bakhsh Rais.
Westview Press, 1995.
6.
Pakistan, 1997.
editors: Craig Baxter, Charles H. Kennedy.
Westview Press, 1998.