Soniah Kamal of Desilit Daily posts an essay by Muneeza Shamsie on Pakistani literature from the May 7 Dawn (no direct link). The article raises some questions for me about the nature of Pakistani literature, including the basic question of how to define it.
Shamsie has edited several anthologies of Pakistani literature, including one that is scheduled to come out this year (And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women; not yet listed). Muneeza Shamsie is also the mother of Kamila Shamsie (pictured right), who seems to be a bit of a prodigy, having published four novels by the age of 32.
I’m grateful to Muneeza Shamsie for offering a long list of Pakistani writers in English; some of them are names I was unfamiliar with. But there are also some things Shamsie does in her essay that I find to be puzzling. 1. Zulfikar Ghose — the first Pakistani novelist in English?
Here is Muneeza Shamsie:
In 1967 the expatriate Zulfikar Ghose published the riveting The Murder of Aziz Khan. This was the first cohesive, modern English novel written by a writer of Pakistani origin. The plot about a poor Punjab farmer destroyed by a group of industrialists, though fiction, was so close to the bone, that the chattering classes were abuzz, speculating “who-was-who.” GhoseÂ’s remaining novels were set in South America, his wifeÂ’s country and few reached Pakistan. (link)
It’s interesting she grants Zulfikar Ghose this status, since his only association with Pakistani nationality is the fact that he was born in Sialkot, and is a Muslim. He’s never lived in Pakistan, though at one point in the early 1960s he almost moved there. According to Muneeza Shamsie’s own biography of him here (a fascinating read, by the way — this man has had an exciting life), Ghose’s family left Sialkot for Bombay in 1942, and Ghose went to England to study in 1959. He married a Brazilian woman in 1964, and has lived in various places in the western hemisphere (including South America) since then. Since 1969, Ghose has taught at the University of Texas. As far as I can tell he is still there, teaching away. (Funny how many cool people end up in Austin, isn’t it?)
To me it seems like Ghose is “Pakistani” by association, but defining writers that way could potentially open up some problems. For instance, if the criterion is birth in what would later be Pakistan, many other writers might qualify, including Khushwant Singh (who published his first novel, Train to Pakistan in 1956).
He didn’t write in English — and so remains off Shamsie’s list — but another problem case is Saadat Hasan Manto, a Kashmiri Muslim who was born in an area that remained in India (Ludhiana, Punjab) during Partition. He migrated to Pakistan in 1947, which would seem to make him a Pakistani, except that most Indians one talks to think of Manto as a great Indian writer. (A translation of Manto’s classic story, “Toba Tek Singh,” is available online.)
Fortunately, later in the same essay, Shamsie acknowledges the problem of defining a “Pakistani” writer, which is exactly the same as defining a Pakistani person when citizenship is not considered the main criterion. One thing Shamsie does not mention, however, is the question of people who may have been born in, say, East Pakistan, and then become redefined as Bangladeshis after 1971. (Though I can’t currently think of any writers specifically in this category; it may not be a big issue.)
2. “Where are all the Pakistani writers?”
More from the Shamsie piece:
Over the next few years, the number of Pakistani English language writers grew rapidly. Adam Zameenzad published four novels and won a first novel award, as did Hanif Kureishi, while Nadeem Aslam won two. Tariq Ali embarked on a Communist trilogy, and an Islam quintet; Bapsi Sidhwa received a prize in Germany, an award in the USA, and published her fourth novel The American Brat (1993). Zulfikar Ghose, who had written around 10 accomplished novels, brought out the intricate and complex The Triple Mirror of the Self about migration and a man’s quest for identity, across four continents. Despite this, in Pakistan, everyone said, “Oh, there are so many Indians writing English, but why aren’t there any Pakistanis?” (link)
Here she makes a very good point. The novelists on this list are all quite accomplished, and indeed, there seems to be a critical mass of serious Pakistani literature emerging, albeit based overwhelmingly in the diaspora. (This is true to a much greater extent than it is in India.)
Why then does the idea of “Indian Writers in English” roll off the tongue, while “Pakistani Writers in English” seems a much more tentative formulation? It may have to do, at least partly, with the divergent interests and experiences of the writers on Shamsie’s list. The style of writing and the thematic interests in the writing of four of the names mentioned in the above paragraph (Hanif Kureishi, Tariq Ali, Bapsi Sidhwa, Zulfikar Ghose) are so different, it’s hard to imagine that all four have their origins in the same country. While the British-Pakistani (‘Brit-Asian’) writers seem to have a certain critical mass, especially with the arrival of people like Nadeem Aslam, when read as exclusiely in terms of their place of origin, the major ‘Pakistani writers’ are pretty isolated from each other.
In short, the category ‘contemporary Pakistani writer in English’ holds together as a kind of geopolitical marker, but perhaps it doesn’t correspond to a real body of texts as well as it ought. (The key word is “perhaps.”)
3. A final oddity: repetition, with a difference
A final oddity: according to Google Cache, Muneeza Shamsie published a version of this article back in February. It is different, yet the same.
More reviews by Muneeza Shamsie:
On Agha Shahid Ali, Rooms Are Never Finished
Zulfikar Ghose is still at UT-Austin. You can find his faculty webpage here.
Another wonderful literary post, Amardeep. I love nothing so much as a bibliiography to go rooting through, a poetic rummage sale.
He migrated to Pakistan in 1947, which would seem to make him a Pakistani, except that most Indians one talks to think of Manto as a great Indian writer.
It seems to me that whatever you rule establish to define Pakistani will have to break the symmetry between Sadat Hasan Manto and the Zulfikir Ghose. In my mind the best definition of diasporic nationality (that is, if it isn’t the obvious of where you live and work, then it must be—) should be self-declaration. So the thing to do, of course, is to ask them. If they won’t answer, you might be able to discern it from their biographical choices. Ghose seems not to have chosen to associate with Pakistan once the opportunity presented itself; Manto seems to have chosen it. (Just based on your descriptions.) For the case of second generation people, I think a good question to ask is–where do you visit when you do visit? Whom do you call? Where are your loved ones?
I’m admiring of these writers if they are isolated from each other, because I think it’s cool that they have a diversity of topics and are not being forced, boson-like, to cohere in some stream of excessive similarity just because of their birth.
I daresay a lot of Pakistanis would call Manto a great Pakistani writer as well. Also, Manto wrote primarily in Urdu, a language which Pakistan has appropriated as its own, while India made efforts to push it away.
Saheli,
You’re absolutely right that self-declaration is the key, though in the case of Zulfikar Ghose that turns out to be harder than I expected when I started out with this post. For one thing, a quote he gives in an interview I found strongly supports the idea that he rejects nationality as a kind of pigeonholing. But at the same time, when I looked at an anthology put together by Muneeza Shamsie on writing by the Pakistani diaspora, his work figures prominently — clearly with his blessing.
To start with, here’s a quote from Zulfikar Ghose that I found after I put this post up:
The fact is that, apart from my second novel, The Murder of Aziz Khan . . . , and my earlier poems that had as their subject my original attachment to India, I do not write about a particular culture at all. I cannot say what I do write about, if anything. All I do is record some images that present themselves and then attempt to discover the imagery that must follow to complete a formal structure that is pleasing to my imagination. From my childhood, I’ve been froced into exile, a condition become so permanent that I can never have a homecoming; I’ve no nationalistic attachments to any country, and indeed have very little to do with the world at all. (from Jussawalla and Dasenbrook’s Interviews With Writers of the Post-Colonial World).
In short, don’t call me a Pakistani, or an Indian, or an American, or a Brit, or a Brazilian!
After reading that, I started to wonder how and why Ghose gave his permission for some of his work to be included in M. Shamsie’s earlier anthology Leaving Home: Towards a New Millennium : A Collection of English Prose by Pakistani Writers . That collection, which Shamsie edited, includes sections of Ghose’s The Triple Mirror of the Self (a partition novel mainly set in Bombay).
It’s clear that he gave his approval for his work to be included, since he writes a brief introduction to the sections from that book included in the anthology… But clearly the title of the anthology suggests he is not uncomfortable being called a “Pakistani Writer”…
In short, even self-declaration doesn’t completely solve the problem of classification. This is one of those cases where “desi” or “South Asian diaspora” may be a better label after all.
The identity talk seen so far is cool as the label “Desi”. It is also very defensive. Need you be? There are always endless lists of novels and novelists (for India too) without much consideration of other forms of prose, or of poetry, drama or literary criticism, which make up Pakistani Literature (or Writing) in English. There are enough diverse prose writers and good poets in that country to widen the conversation and awareness of that country’s English writing. I recently across the works of poets Maki Kureshi, Alamgir Hashimi and Taufig Rifat; prose writers Enver Moorj, Omer Kureshi, Khalid Hasan; literary critics Alamgir Hashmi, Ahmed Ali, Syed Sajjad Husain, etc. They all lived in Pakistan. Bapsi Sidwa now lives in the U.S. but most prominent writers lived and worked in their country of origin.
Dear Madam There are Pakistani writers writing in the English Language only that they need to be recognized and helped to be published. I say this because I have been writing since 1980, have published articles in Womens Own Magazine Karachi, published poems on http://www.poetry.com and now three poems have been published in the UK recent one in Regional Poetry of The Midlands. The poem is Ode to Nottingham’ March 2006 published by Forwardpress UK. I need help to get my work published in book form otherwise my short stories and poems can be read on the Internet at http://www.uslegacies.com http://www.toowrite.com and http://www.litvision.org Perhaps Madam Kamila can enlist me as a Pakistani English writer Thankyou.
Infact , not a comment that i wanted to pen down but just a short question. English literature,when looked at, from a broader point of view in terms of time, seems to be bringing changes in the readers and society in general since 15th century ; How far does Pakistani literature has the power to do so? and what can be the possible lines of movement in future keeping in mind the current state of Literature as a whole?
It was grate to find out that their are people who are looking the people in diffrient and true creative action .Im not a very educated man,but just a creature lost in the way donot know where did he came from but just dead alive . On the other hand we pakistani(Im still not accepted by My country ,Im from Hunzaa)expression of our own and its beauitful and good to read ,every age and every culture is looked and observed by their written work which is imortal andthe true picture,,,,,,,,,,,sorry Ijust go without any topic very nice ,keepit up Time never dies ,if we keep watcing
hai, i have come across this page by accident, but i’m in a hope that i could get necessary details regarding pakistani writers in english. i would like to know whether there is/are novel/s written on Partition in 1947 that includes the then realities like exodus, relationships, action filled scenes, mass killings, sacrifices, etc. if so could i be known the authors and the title of the novels and the availability of the same?
Saehli, Amardeep,
You both make sense–and complicate matters. Look at any introductory note in most original publications by Zulfikar Ghose; he is described, evidently with his approval, as a Pakistani writer. Long before Muneeza Shamsie’s anthology, if you can find the very first anthology of Pakistani literature in English, which I have now read through, titled Pakistani Literature: The Contemporary English Writers (New York, 1978; second edition, Islamabad, 1987) edited by the eminent scholar and poet Alamgir Hashmi, you will find Zulfikar Ghose there with original works not seen anywhere else before that date. What does that tell us about indirect self-declaration?
To robby’s question, the simple answer is: yes there are many stories, poems and novels by Pakistani writers who have written in English on different subjects (including those you mention). You just need a good library and a good guide to find them. Good luck!
Atif is very demanding. Questions of ‘power’ and ‘lines of movement’. Somebody gave English literature over five hundred years for these (according to his calculation). Let’s be fair. Give Pakistani liteature in English, and also yourself (the readers), half as much time before you ask for so much. It seems to be doing already what fine writing does anyway. That is the line for the future.
i live in india and ve not been able to find shafiq ur rehman s books translated in hindi or english here. could you please give me the name of his publishing houses here in india? ever since i ve read his short story turap chal i ve become a huge huge huge fan
thanking you, tanu goel final year student of llb (law) delhi university, new delhi
Until I have read Tariq Rahman’s much coveted study guide to the developers of English Literature having Pakistani bloods in their vein, I have vague idea about the development of English Literature in Pakistan. Tariq Rahman’s “A History of Pakistani Literature in English†indeed is a book that brings the Pakistani writers before our eyes with so delicate familiarity that they all seem to be one with us. If I name the reading of this book my debut to the world of English Literature, it would not be wrong. Before reading this book, In knew that Feroze Khan Noon, sometimes, Prime Minister of Pakistan, has become the part of our history. But when I come across some of his books, I found that he has continuity in the future and very living being even in our times.The books reflects the moods and modes of Pakistani English writer from Ahmed Ali to Iftikhar Ghose, from Amina Khamisani to Bapsi Sidhwa. from Hanif Kureishi to Mohsin Hamid and from Sara Suleri Qaisra Shahraz and Sorayya Khan.
I came across this post by accident today, and am glad I did. I agree with Amardeep’s point in the comments, why not just refer to South Asian literature in English? To me, it doesn’t make sense to differentiate between authors of Indian origin and those of Pakistani origin. As Amardeep pointed out in the post, this distinction doesn’t even apply properly to those authors born before 1947. Manto for example is both an Indian and a Pakistani writer. Also, I feel that a lot of South Asian fiction deals with similar cultural issues. Pakistanis as well as Indians can relate to Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy or Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children or Shame. At least in the domain of literature and the arts, we don’t have to succumb to the exclusionary India vs. Pakistan rhetoric.
I want good English writers . who can work from home. contact be.superior@hotmail.com
It is a very interesting and good to know that people are making huge efforts in establishing themselves in and out of the country. Regards, ali muwasalat.com
hy i am writing thesis on twilight in delhi by ahmad ali. plz help me out in this regard. thanks.Ali Mortaza Pakistan
Hy my i am Ali from Pakistan and working on Ahmad Ali. Please help me out in this regard.Thanks
I HAVE A “ISLAMIC BLOG” IN THE FACEBOOK. I AM ABSOLUTELY AND TOTALLY AGAINST FUNDAMENTALIST VISION OF ISLAM. GOD DID NOT ORDAIN ANYONE INCLUDING THE HOLY PROFIT (PEACE BE UPON HIM) TO GO AND EXPLODE BOMBS AND KILL PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD. THE FORMULAE ARE ALL IN THE HOLY BOOK. ALL THE PRINCIPLES AND DICTATIONS ARE IN THE BOOK. AFTER THAT NO ONE HAS PROMPTED MUSLIMS TO GO AND FORCIBLY EITHER CONVINCE PEOPLE OR USE FORCE TO HAVE THEIR WAY.
I INVITE ALL READERS OF THESE LINES TO WRITE BLOGS ON MY FACEBOOK ENDEAVOR AND PUT THEIR OPINIONS DOWN. WHEN FIREPOWER CANNOT BE MET WITH FIREPOWER, IT SHOULD BE DEALT WITH LITERATURE, BOOKS AND WRITINGS.GANDHI MADE THE BRITISH ‘QUIT INDIA’ BY NON VIOLENCE AND BY NON-COOPERATION. MANDELA SUFFERED MOST OF HIS LIFE IN RACIST SOUTH AFRICA AND THE BRITISH PLAYED UP INDIA FOR MORE THAN 300 YEARS WITH THEIR DOG AND PONY SHOWS.
GEORGE W. BUSH SAW IT FIT TO SLAUGHTER IRAQI MUSLIMS AND A NUMBER OF GOOD GOD FEARING MUSLIMS IN THE NAME OF RIDDING THE WORLD OF TERRORISM, AND O!! HOW MUCH HE LOVED TO FREE THE IRAQIS. IS HE EVER GOING TO BE TRIED AND JAILED. I DON’T THINK SO. THERE IS AN OUTCRY THAT GEORGE W. AND HIS THUGS ARE WAR CRIMINALS (QUOTE IMRAN KHAN OF PAKISTAN)BUT IT KEEPS FALLING ON DEAF EARS.
I INVITE READERS OF THESE LINES TO DISCUSS THESE MATTERS WITH THEIR OPINIONS AND KNOWLEDGE. PLEASE TYPE IN BADAR M. BUTT IN THE FACEBOOK.
This is about my contribution to English poetry. The collection of my Enlish poems, entitled, ‘of hungry cats and immortal pigeons’ was admired by Bertrand Russell, and much later, Professors John Rathmell and Roy Park of the Cambridge and Oxford Universities respectively, among many others. Some more details can be ‘search’ed under ‘Farman Yusufzai’ and the title of the collection. I will end this already long comment with the offer to provide more details myself.
Farman Yusufzai 18 Elfleda Rd Cambridge CB5 8LZ UK
I wonder whether I can send my novels and poetry books for comments to Muneeza Shamsie
Besides poetry I have also published a literary/philosophical work entitled: “the quest for/ the unchained mind/ in the light of/ ‘all-inclusive understanding’/a world view”. It consists of 509 aphorisms ( all my own ). Published in Canada by Trafford Publishing ( pl search under http://www.Trafford.com, Farman Yusufzai or the book’s title.) Two examples from the aphorisms : ‘Do what you will, or you will end up doing what others will.’
Farman Yusufzai
‘Sex is a woman’s strength, a man’ weakness’. The book is available from the publisher.
My email address is:
My email address is < thinkaiu@gmail.com>
Farman Yuufzai
Always the writing has to be in English doesn’t it? Would a Chinese writer only be recognised if they only wrote in English??