Fiction written in English by Pakistanis
ISLAMABAD (July 23 2007): The bomb scare in Karachi, fortunately a hoax, or at best an attempt by some amateurs, could not dampen the sale of Harry Potter’s latest and final seventh volume.
On the other hand, Harry Potter new book has inspired the young lot–and many mature people–to write fiction stories in English.
In fact, Pakistanis writing fiction is no longer an unknown quantity or quality. One of the earliest fiction works remembered is Professor Ahmad Ali’s good novel ‘Twilight in Delhi’, though he wrote this novel in undivided India, just when the plan for the creation of Pakistan was being contemplated.
So, there was generally a denial of acceptance that Pakistanis could be good writers in the English language. Perhaps for that reason, when Zulfikar Ghose published his first collection of English verses, in 1965, the anthology was labelled as ‘The First Voices’.
However, the Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) has tried to dispel this impression and has established the fact that Pakistanis could write equally well as any author writing English, and that they are quite adept in the art of (poetry or) fiction writing.
To press home this claim, every six months, the Pakistan Academy of Writers, at Islamabad, brings out its half-yearly journal titled ‘Pakistani Literature’.
Through this, it establishes the fact that the genre of Pakistani English writing is emerging just as well and is as acceptable internationally as the African, American, or Indian variety.
Last year, in addition of the anthology of poetry, the PAL also published an anthology of English prose, written in Pakistan during last fifty years. Besides the name of Zulfikar Ghose, who is credited with writing ‘The murder of Aziz Khan’, probably the first English novel written in Pakistan after 1947, the list contained impressive names of Abdul Basit Haqqani, Adam Zameenzad, Bapsi Sidhwa, Tariq Rahman, Muzaffar Iqbal, Muneeza Shamsie, Reszeshta Sethna, Ameer Hussain and Suhayl Saadi.
However, the list was by no means exhaustive. The names of Arshia, Atiya Husain, Hanif Kuresihi, Humera Afridi, Imad Rahman, Irfan Husain, Khalid Hasan, Omar Kuresihi, Kamela Shamsie, Nadeem Aslam, Javed Qazi, Rukshana Ahmad, Tridiv Roy, Wasef, Zaibunnissa Hamidullah, Zia Mohyuddin, to name a few, are missing. Some names included in the list, such as Tariq Rahman, was quite as surprising since we know him as a writer of treatises and a number of research books on madrassah and education system, though in the collection he has contributed a short story called ‘The Zoo’. (I read Omar Kureishi’s memoirs ‘Once Upon a Time’ rather as a work of fiction).
And, the names of some very important recent fiction writers were excluded, perhaps because the sponsors of the book could not establish contact with numerous writers of fiction who have since grown in number and have established their identity in England, or the United States, where their works were published.
The exclusion of Tridiv Roy was also quite surprising since Tariq Rahman wrote a short foreword to discuss English writers of Pakistan in the two collections of short stories in English, many of them describing his beloved and colourful Rangamati locale and his people in former East Pakistan.
This controversy apart, we can now discuss Bapsi Sidhwa, Kamila Shamsie, Muneeza Shamsie, Sarah Sulehri, all four women writers, who have achieved distinction and have received acclaim for introducing the critical mass of Pakistani literature in the western milieu. As accomplished fiction writers full of divergent interests and experiences, they enjoy the same as an American or British writers.
Among them, the most famous is Kamala Shamsie (daughter of Muneeza Shamsie) who edited an anthology ‘Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women of Pakistani Literature’ and has published four novels by the age of 32.
In 1996, the Oxford University Press asked Muneeza Shamsie to publish an anthology of English writing. She found the material challenging and discovered the works of 44 new Pakistanis writing in English, the English language, with the publication of three of Kamila Shamsie’s work, being the major event for Pakistani writers.
Regardless of the mélange of writing, one critic observed that one rarely comes across a pucca novel, or adventure story, from Pakistani writers, who tend to crowd their desi narrative with lessons from English writer, through such a description could not be justified in the case of senior writers such as Bapsi Sidhwa, Kamila or Muneeza Shamiie.
While all this may be true, there is one genre of writing that is left quite unexplored by Pakistani writers writing in English, and it is of translation. Because very few of our writers were willing to undertake translation work, a world of classic literature produced in Urdu and other languages of Pakistan have not been introduced to the outside world. This kind of work awaits the attention of a bureau of translation to which such institutions as the National Book Foundation, or Pakistan Academy of Letters, should pay attention.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:7/23/2007
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