In this poignant and meditative collection of short stories, Zubair Ahmad captures the lives and experiences of the people of the Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan. In an intimate narrative style, Ahmad writes a world that hovers between memory and imagination, home and abroad. The narrator follows the pull of his subconscious, shifting between past and present, recalling different eras of Lahore’s neighbourhoods and the communities.
These stories evoke the complex realities of post-colonial Pakistani Punjab. The contradictions and betrayals of this region’s history reverberate through the stories, evident in the characters, their circumstances, and sometimes their erasure. Skillfully translated from Punjabi by Anne Murphy, this collection is an essential contribution to the wider recognition of the Punjabi language and its literature.
Authors
- DOI
- 1
- Pages
- 197
- Published in
- Athabasca, CA
- Rights
- Anne Murphy
- Series
- Mingling Voices
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Half Title 2
- Title 4
- Copyright 5
- Dedication 6
- Contents 8
- Introduction 10
- Waliullah Is Lost 28
- Bajwa Has Nothing More to Say Now 42
- Dead Man’s Float 54
- Pigeons, Ledges, and Streets 66
- He Has Left, and Won’t Be Back 84
- The Beak of the Green Parrot, Submerged in the River 102
- Sweater 114
- Unstory 120
- The Estranged City 128
- The Silence of Saints 142
- Half Maghar Moon 148
- The Wall of Water 162
