Short Stories From Pakistan: Fifty Years Of Pakistani Short Stories

"If we pass over the question of what the literature should be from the nationalisitc point of view and take alook at Pakistani literature,more specifically Pakistani short stories,and try to understand the background,then a broad picture emerges and it is:the environment and the society that obtained after the partition and that evolved over the past fifty years,was not the same as composite socoiety that existed before the partition.Pakistan has a dominant Muslim majority.So the nature of social interactions was different from that in India.

"A more important thing is that just after the Partition the writers and thinkers had to negotiate questions that were specific to the divided country.The writers in India were not faced with such questions as they were inheritors of a historical and literary continuity.If Pakistan were a different nation,then what was it's national and cultural identity?Where could it trace the beginnings?One could certainly trace it from the advent of Muslims in the subcontinent,but how about the eras before that?"

The short stories written originally in Urdu,Punjabi,Sindhi,Pushto and Saraiki,and now translated into English-showcased in this anthology engage with the questions mentioned afore in their own ways,articulating a multiplicity of voices and experiences.They chronicle the birth of the Pakistani nation in traumatic circumstances and it's chequered history over the past fifty years,through depicting the "desires and aspirations,fear and horror,pride,shame,helplessness and a thopusand other unnamed feelings" of their protagonists.While doing so,they also depict the immensely varied and rich tapestry of the cultural life in Pakistan.