Best of
Pakistan

2008

Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River


Alice Albinia - 2008
    For millennia it has been worshipped as a god; for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion; today it is the cement of Pakistans fractious union. Five thousand years ago, a string of sophisticated cities grew and traded on its banks. In the ruins of these elaborate metropolises, Sanskrit-speaking nomads explored the river, extolling its virtues in Indias most ancient text, the Rig-Veda. During the past two thousand years a series of invaders Alexander the Great, Afghan Sultans, the British Raj made conquering the Indus valley their quixotic mission. For the people of the river, meanwhile, the Indus valley became a nodal point on the Silk Road, a centre of Sufi pilgrimage and the birthplace of Sikhism. Empires of the Indus follows the river upstream and back in time, taking the reader on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and more than five millennia of history redolent with contemporary importance.

Cosmic Anger: Abdus Salam - The First Muslim Nobel Scientist


Gordon Fraser - 2008
    His achievements are often overlooked, even besmirched. Realizing that the whole world had to be his stage, he pioneered the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, a vital focus of Third World science which remains as his monument. A staunch Muslim, he was ashamed of the decline of science in the heritage of Islam, and struggled doggedly to restore it to its former glory. Undermined by his excommunication, these valiant efforts were doomed.

Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within


Shuja Nawaz - 2008
    Shuja Nawaz examines the army and Pakistan in both peace and war. Using many hitherto unpublished materials from the archives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army, as well as interviews with key military and political figures in Pakistan and the United States, he sheds light not only on the Pakistan Army and its US connections but also on Pakistan as a key Muslim country in one of the world's toughest neighborhoods. In doing so, he lays bare key facts about Pakistan's numerous wars with India and its many rounds of political musical chairs, as well as the Kargil conflict of 1999. He then draws lessons from this history that may help Pakistan end its wars within and create a stabler political entity.

A Concise History of Pakistan


Muhammad Raza Kazmi - 2008
    Being published as Pakistan completes its sixtieth year as a nation state the book covers contemporary crises in the perspective of the subcontinent's ancient andmedieval history to explain how Muslim nationalism emerged and how the community interacted with the other communities in the region.Covering the centuries from Mehergarh to Musharraf, the author breaches the confines of political history to depict the intellectual, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history of Pakistan. Topics that have become the subject of controversy such as the 1971 Poland Resolution and the 1972 SimlaAgreement are highlighted in boxes. The book is thematically addressed, but it provides underpinning by interspersing personality profiles of the individuals who shaped the course of events over the centuries. This gallery includes Amir Khusro as the embodiment of a distinctive Indo-Muslim culture;Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru, whose lofty ideals nevertheless resulted in Partition; M.A. Jinnah, who is credited with almost single-handedly creating the state of Pakistan; and the volatile but tragic figure of Z.A. Bhutto.In covering economic history, the author has also treated unorthodox subjects such as the rise and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and the Kalabagh Dam controversy. In diplomatic history the author presents little known material on the 1971 War and in intellectual history heexamines the circumstances that caused piety to develop into terror. Replete with striking interpretations based on neglected but authentic sources, this book breaks fresh ground.

Witness to Blunder: Kargil Story Unfolds


Ashfaq Hussain - 2008
    Published in September 2008, it coincides with the passing of a decade since the military operation was initiated on snow-tipped mountains in the winter of 1998-1999.

Love, Longing and Death


امر جليل [Amar Jaleel] - 2008
    You feel the agony, pain, and trauma of the victims trapped in the holocaust, and at times you sense to have come alive from the horrors of 1947. The book brings you a fresh experience in literature. Amar Jaleel's stories are woven in mysticism around the issues of religion, politics, traditions, and the changing human values in the dwindling world.

The Coffee House of Lahore: A Memoir 1942-57


K.K. Aziz - 2008
    

A History of Pashtun Migration, 1775-2006


Robert Nichols - 2008
    This interregional history of migration and mobility in the modern period from 1775 to 2006 follows Pashtun individuals and communities as they left homelands and responded to colonial and post-colonial opportunities and challenges in eighteenth century Rohilkhand, nineteenth century northern India and Hyderabad, Pakistan after 1947, and the Gulf region from the nineteenth century to the present. Pashtuns in permanent or temporary diaspora were transformed by the range of possible social consequences as they circulated in South Asia and the greater Indian Ocean region, variously experiencing degrees of assimilation, integration, sustained ethnic self-awareness, and, increasingly, notions of "national" identity. Pashtuns in home villages and in distant locations exhibited personal initiative and agency even as they were affected by wider European imperial policies, national and interregional political competition, and the evolving pressures of an expanding world economy. This work illuminates the history of Pashtuns and Pakistan and offers insight into how Asian regional populations have been integrated into, and often subordinated by, the dynamics of contemporary globalization.

Europa


Moniza Alvi - 2008
    Its centrepiece is a re-imagining of the story of the rape of Europa by Jupiter as a bull. Her latest collection also includes a series of poems exploring post-traumatic stress disorder, and further versions of the French poet Jules Supervielle with their Second World War background. Europa is a dark, unified book whose poems move towards regeneration.

Back to the Future: The Khanate of Kalat and the Genesis of Baluch Nationalism 1915-1955


Martin Axmann - 2008
    The study portrays the decline and disintegration of the Baloch khanate of Kalat during the last decades of British rule, analyzes Kalat's lack of integration but increasing attachment to British Indian affairs, and summarizes the colonial legacy of Balochistan in respect of political, administrative, and constitutional development. It investigates the emergence of a royalist movement around the figure of the khan of Kalat, and discusses his attempt to turn back time and revert to Balochistan's pre-colonial status. The book also probes into the coincident rise of a Baloch nationalist movement, and analyzes the political and cultural framework of an emerging Baloch national identity. It traces the political demands of Baloch nationalist pioneers, and looks for interrelations with the Muslim nationalist and the Baloch royalist movements. Back to the Future ascertains the emergence of a Baloch national movement as the outcome of the historical and political circumstances during the British withdrawal from India, and portrays the evolution of Baloch national identity as a reaction to the territorial, political, and cultural inclusion on the side of the All India Muslim League and the Pakistan movement.

Warrior Poets


Benjamin Gilmour - 2008
    With unstoppable determination, Benjamin decided to return a year later to make a movie about those tribal regions - despite the fact that he had never actually made a film before and that it was illegal and extremely dangerous for him to do so. Warrior Poets is a riveting memoir about Benjamin’s journeys to Pakistan and the making of the film.

The History of Pakistan


Iftikhar H. Malik - 2008
    Rooted in the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, shaped by the cultures of both the Middle and Far East, and now predominantly devoted to Islam, Pakistan has emerged as a unique Indo-Muslim community, viewed with caution and curiosity by the rest of the world. In this latest volume of Greenwood's History of Modern Nations series, readers discover the foundations of modern Pakistan, from its earliest empires and shared history with India to the coming of Islam and its successful fight for independence in 1947. This highly informative guide also examines the key issues and attitudes guiding Pakistan today: their volatile feud with India over the region of Kashmir and the right to nuclear development, internal debates over the role of Islam in Pakistani society, and the unbreakable dominance of the military in political affairs. Poised between a radically changing India and the politically unstable Middle East, Pakistan is an important nation to understand as it determines its course in rapidly a changing world.

Tales of Two Cities


Kuldip Nayar - 2008
    As a young law graduate, Kuldip Nayar witnessed at first hand the collapse of trust between communities in Sialkot and was forced to migrate with his family to Delhi across the blood-stained plains of Punjab. He vividly describes his own perilous journey and his first job as a young journalist in an Urdu newspaper reporting on Gandhi's assassination. Asif Noorani, while still a schoolboy in Bombay, set off with his family by steamer across the Arabian Sea for the promised land of Pakistan, ultimately settling in Karachi. He gives his own compelling account of the difficulties faced by the new arrivals and the slow emergence of today's megacity with its dominant Mohajir culture. Both authors write with authority about their ancestral homes and their adopted cities, which have played so large a role in bilateral relations. This is a book about a trauma which transformed the subcontinent and still exerts a powerful influence today. These are personal narratives bringing to life a lost world of harmonious relations which each author in his own way is still to recreate.