Narrating Pakistan: An Anthology Of Contemporary Creative Writing

Narrating Pakistan is an attempt to explore the idea of Pakistan through contemporary stories-the term, the country, the nation, the identity, the idea, the boundary, the border, the story, the history, the arch, or the absence thereof. What are some of our stories? What demands to be written? And what remains unsaid? The stories, fictional and nonfictional, show multiple perspectives on what constitutes a Pakistani writer or a Pakistani narrative. The characters range from truck drivers in interior Sindh to Muslim boys growing up in the suburban United States, from young men arriving in Sydney and Frankfurt battling cultural shock to women in urban Islamabad fighting patriarchy. Interweaved among the surrealistic imaginations of diasporic writers are reflections on memory, language, disease, death, and belonging. All the writers gathered here share a contemporary cosmopolitan sensibility. The last author in the anthology is a digital entity and problematizes the idea of a storyteller with a distinct geographical region and acknowledges the posthuman future awaiting all of us. A momentous coming together of brilliant young writers. The writers in this anthology are narrating a different story of Pakistan-a richer, truer, more nuanced Pakistan than can be found in any newspaper or column. A book to help us feel more deeply, and see farther. Bilal Tanweer