Contemporary Pakistani Speculative Fiction and the Global Imaginary PDF Download

Author: Shazia Sadaf
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000936929
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
As the first book-length study of emergent Pakistani speculative fiction written in English, this critical work explores the ways in which contemporary Pakistani authors extend the genre in new directions by challenging the cognitive majoritarianism (usually Western) in this field. Responding to the recent Afro science fiction movement that has spurred non-Western writers to seek a democratization of the broader genre of speculative fiction, Pakistani writers have incorporated elements from djinn mythology, Qur'anic eschatology, "Desi" (South Asian) traditions, local folklore, and Islamic feminisms in their narratives to encourage familiarity with alternative world views. In five chapters, this book analyzes fiction by several established Pakistani authors as well as emerging writers to highlight the literary value of these contemporary works in reconciling competing cognitive approaches, blurring the dividing line between "possibilities" and "impossibilities" in envisioning humanity’s collective future, and anticipating the future of human rights in these envisioned worlds.

Author: Aroosa Kanwal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003835686
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
Rehumanizing Muslim Subjectivities: Postcolonial Geographies, Postcolonial Ethics is a timely and urgent monograph, allowing us to imagine what it feels like to be the victim of genocide, abuse, dehumanization, torture and violence, something which many Muslims in Palestine, Kashmir, Pakistan, Myanmar, Syria, Iraq and China have to endure. Most importantly, the book emphasizes the continued relevance of creative literature’s potential to intervene in and transform our understanding of a conceptual and political field, as well as advanced technologies of power and domination. The book makes a substantial theoretical contribution by drawing on wide-ranging angles and dimensions of contemporary drone warfare and its related catastrophes, postcolonial ethics in relation to the thanatopolitics of slow violence, dehumanization and the politics of death. Against the backdrop of such institutionalized and diverse acts of violence committed against Muslim communities, I call the postcolonial Muslim world ‘geographies of dehumanization’. The book investigates how ongoing legacies of contemporary forms of injustice and denial of subjecthood are represented, staged and challenged in a range of postcolonial anglophone Muslim texts, thereby questioning the idea of postcolonial ethics. One of the selling points of this book is the chapters on fictional representations by Muslim Myanmar and Uyghur writers as, to the best of my knowledge, no critical work or single authored book is available on Myanmar and Uyghur literature to date.

Author: Sarah Faber
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003852963
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
From early examples of queer representation in mainstream media to present-day dissolutions of the human-nature boundary, the Gothic is always concerned with delineating and transgressing the norms that regulate society and speak to our collective fears and anxieties. This volume examines British and American Gothic texts from four centuries and diverse media – including novels, films, podcasts, and games – in case studies which outline the central relationship between the Gothic and transgression, particularly gender(ed) and sexual transgression. This relationship is both crucial and constantly shifting, ever in the process of renegotiation, as transgression defines the Gothic and society redefines transgression. The case studies draw on a combination of well-studied and under-studied texts in order to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of transgression in the Gothic. Pointing the way forward in Gothic Studies, this original and nuanced combination of gendered, Ecogothic, queer, and media critical approaches addresses established and new scholars of the Gothic alike.

Author: Janka Kascakova
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000958167
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This volume is a long overdue contribution to the dynamic, but unevenly distributed study of fantasy and J.R.R. Tolkien’s legacy in Central Europe. The chapters move between and across theories of cultural and social history, reception, adaptation, and audience studies, and offer methodological reflections on the various cultural perceptions of Tolkien’s oeuvre and its impact on twenty-first century manifestations. They analyse how discourses about fantasy are produced and mediated, and how processes of re-mediation shape our understanding of the historical coordinates and local peculiarities of fantasy in general, and Tolkien in particular, all that in Central Europe in an age of global fandom. The collection examines the entanglement of fantasy and Central European political and cultural shifts across the past 50 years and traces the ways in which its haunting legacy permeates and subverts different modes and aesthetics across different domains from communist times through today’s media-saturated culture.

Author: Cara N. Cilano
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135907250
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Looking at a wide selection of Pakistani novels in English, this book explores how literary texts imaginatively probe the past, convey the present, and project a future in terms that facilitate a sense of collective belonging. The novels discussed cover a range of historical movements and developments, including pre-20th century Islamic history, the 1947 partition, the 1971 Pakistani war, the Zia years, and post-9/11 Pakistan, as well as pervasive themes, including ethnonationalist tensions, the zamindari system, and conspiracy thinking. The book offers a range of representations of how and whether collective belonging takes shape, and illustrates how the Pakistani novel in English, often overshadowed by the proliferation of the Indian novel in English, complements Pakistani multi-lingual literary imaginaries by presenting alternatives to standard versions of history and by highlighting the issues English-language literary production bring to the fore in a broader Pakistani context. It goes on to look at the literary devices and themes used to portray idea, nation and state as a foundation for collective belonging. The book illustrates the distinct contributions the Pakistani novel in English makes to the larger fields of postcolonial and South Asian literary and cultural studies.

Author: Aroosa Kanwal
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138745520
Category : Criticism, interpretation, etc
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Introduction / Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam -- Reimagining History: The Legacy of War and Partition. "All These Angularities": Spatialising non-Muslim Pakistani Identities / Cara Cilano -- 1971: Reassessing a Forgotten National Narrative / Muneeza Shamsie -- History, Borders and Identity: Dealing with Silenced Memories of 1971 / Daniela Vitolo -- 9/11 and Beyond: Contexts, Forms and Perspectives. Global Pakistan in the Wake of 9/11 / Ulka Anjaria -- US-American Inoutside Perspectives and the Dynamics of Post-9/11 Dissociation in Pakistani Fiction / Claudia Nordinger -- The Nuclear Novel in Pakistan / Michaela M. Henry -- Uses of Humour in Post-9/11 Pakistani Anglophone Fiction: H.M Naqvi's Home Boy and Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes / Ambreen Hai -- Comic Affiliations/Comic Subversions: The Use of Humour in Contemporary British Pakistani Fiction / Sarah Ilott -- Resistance and Redefinition: Theatre of the Pakistani Diaspora in the UK and the US / Suhaan Mehta -- Historiographic Metafiction and Renarrating History / Nisreen Yousef -- The Dialectics of Human Rights: Politics, Positionality, Controversies. Pakistani Fiction and Human Rights / Esra Mirze Santesso -- Divergent Discourses: Human Rights, and Contemporary Pakistani Anglophone Literature / Shazia Sadaf -- The Taming of the Tribal within Pakistani Narratives of Progress, Conflict and Romance / Uzma Abid Ansari -- Phoenix Rising: The West's Use (and misuse) of Anglophone Memoirs of Pakistani Women / Colleen Lutz Clemens -- Writing Back and/as Activism: Refiguring Victimhood and Remapping the Shooting of Malala Yousafzai / Rachel Fox -- Identities in Question: Shifting Perspectives on Gender. Doing History Right: Challenging Masculinist Postcolonialism in Pakistani English Literature / Fawzia Afzal-Khan -- Love, Sex, and Desire v/s Islam in British Muslim Literature / Kavita Bhanot -- Everyday Life and Wordly Subjectivity in Pakistani Anglophone Fiction / Mosarrap Hossain Khan -- Spaces of Female Subjectivity: Identity, Difference, Agency. Agency, Gender, Nationalism and the Romantic Imaginary in Pakistan / Abu-Bakar Ali -- Conjugal Homes: Marriage Culture in Contemporary Novels of the Pakistani Diaspora / Rahul K. Gairola and Elham Fatma -- British-Pakistani Female Playwrights: Feminist Perspectives on Sexuality, Marriage, and Domestic Violence / Aqeel Abdulla -- Shifting Contexts: New Perspectives on Identity, Space and Mobility. Identifying Islamic Spaces of Worship in Contemporary British Pakistani Life Writing / Gerogia Stabler -- Homes and Belonging(s): The Interconnectedness of Space, Movement and Identity in British Pakistani Novels / Eva Pataki -- Committed and Communist: Negotiating Political Alegiances in the Diaspora / Miquel Pomar-Amer -- Unsettling Narratives: Imagining Post-postcolonial Perspectives. Non-Human Narrative Agency: Textual Sedimentation in Pakistani Anglophone Literature / Asma Mansoor -- Post-Postcolonial Experiments with Perspectives / Hanji Lee -- Peripheral Modernism and Realism in British-Pakistani Fiction / Asher Ghaffar -- New Horizons: Towards a Pakistani Idiom. "Brand Pakistan": Global Imaginings and National Concerns in Pakistani Anglophone Literature / Barirah Nazir, Nicholas Holm and Kim L. Worthington -- Competing Habitus: National Expectations, Metropolitan Market and Pakistani Writing in English (PWE) / Masood Raja -- De/Re-constructing Identities: Critical Approaches to Contemporary Pakistani Fiction / Faisal Nazir -- On the Wings of Poesy: Pakistani Diaspora Poets and the Pakistani Idiom / Waseem Anwar -- Brand Pakistan: The Case of Pakistani Anglophone Literary Canon / Aroosa Kanwal and Saiyma Aslam

Author: Muneeza Shamsie
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
ISBN: 1558619313
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The only English-language anthology by Pakistani women published in the United States, And the World Changed goes beyond the sensational headlines to reveal the stories of Pakistani women. Immigrants and refugees, travelers and explorers, seasoned authors and fresh voices, the twenty-five writers in this volume are as dynamic and diverse as their stories. Sixty years have passed since the Partition of India, and it’s clear that Pakistani writers have established their own literary tradition to record the stories of their communities. Famed novelist Bapsi Sidhwa portrays a Pakistani community in Houston, Texas, still struggling to heal from the horrors of Partition. In Uzma Aslam Khan’s tale, a man working in a Karachi auto body shop falls in love with the magical woman painted on a bus cabin. Bushra Rehman introduces us to a Pakistani girl living in Corona, Queens, who becomes painfully aware of the tensions between established Italian immigrants and their new Pakistani neighbors. And during the anti-Muslim sentiment following 9/11, a young woman in newcomer Humera Afridi’s story searches Manhattan’s rubble-filled streets for a mosque. Filled with nostalgic memories of Pakistan, critical commentary about the world’s current political climate, and inspirational hope for the future, the stories in And the World Changed weave an intricate, enlightening view of Pakistan, its relation to the West, and the women who travel between the two regions. Featuring: Talat Abbasi, Humera Afridi, Aamina Ahmad, Rukhsana Ahmad, Feryal Ali Gauhar, Sara Suleri Goodyear, Shahrukh Husain, Sabyn Javeri Jillani, Sonia Kamal, Fawzia Afzal Khan, Sorayya Khan, Uzma Aslam Khan, Maniza Naqvi, Tahira Naqvi, Nayyara Rahman, Hima Raza, Bushra Rehman, Fahmida Riaz, Roshni Rustomji, Sehba Sarwar, Bina Shah, Qaisra Shahraz, Kamila Shamsie, Muneeza Shamsie, and Bapsi Sidwa.

Author: Muneeza Shamsie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 640

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Book Description
Including the work of well-known, award-winning writers such as Hanif Kureshi, Sara Suleri, Moniza Alvi, and Ahmed Ali, this is a selection of the fiction, poetry, and drama of over forty writers of Pakistani origin. All work is in English.

Author: Bina Shah
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504055160
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
“A haunting dystopian thriller” from the acclaimed author of A Season for Martyrs— “Fans of The Handmaid’s Tale won’t want to miss this one” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). In modern, beautiful Green City, the capital of Southwest Asia, gender selection, war, and disease have brought the ratio of men to women to alarmingly low levels. The government uses terror and technology to control its people, and now females must take multiple husbands to have children as quickly as possible. Yet there are some who resist, women who live in an underground collective and refuse to be part of the system. Secretly protected by the highest echelons of power, they emerge only at night to provide the rich and elite of Green City a type of commodity no one can buy: intimacy without sex. As it turns out, not even the most influential men can shield them from discovery and the dangers of ruthless punishment. This dystopian novel from one of Pakistan’s most talented writers is a modern-day parable, The Handmaid’s Tale for repressed women in Muslim countries everywhere. Before She Sleeps takes the patriarchal practices of female seclusion and veiling, gender selection, and control over women’s bodies, amplifying and distorting them in a truly terrifying way to imagine a world of post-religious authoritarianism.

Author: J. G. Ballard
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404745
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
“J.G. Ballard is the undisputed laureate of suburban psychosis. . . . A brilliant novel.”—Literary Review A violent novel filled with insidious twists, Kingdom Come follows the exploits of Richard Pearson, a rebellious, unemployed advertising executive, whose father is gunned down by a deranged mental patient in a vast shopping mall outside Heathrow Airport. When the prime suspect is released without charge, Richard’s suspicions are aroused. Investigating the mystery, Richard uncovers at the Metro-Centre mall a neo-fascist world whose charismatic spokesperson is whipping up the masses into a state of unsustainable frenzy. Riots frequently terrorize the complex, immigrant communities are attacked by hooligans, and sports events mushroom into jingoistic political rallies. In this gripping, dystopian tour de force, J.G. Ballard holds up a mirror to suburban mind rot, revealing the darker forces at work beneath the gloss of consumerism and flag-waving patriotism.