Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University, and Munir Akram, Pakistan's former ambassador to the United Nations, provide critical perspectives on Pakistan's future. Additional essays capture the complex interplay between domestic and external pressures, such as the variety of powers that continue to manipulate the country's behavior and outcomes. The contributors gathered here ultimately conclude that Pakistan is capable of transitioning into a stable modern Muslim state, though bold reforms are necessary. Offering a detailed and balanced agenda for such reform, "Pakistan "takes a bold step in reeling the country back from the brink of crisis.

    It revolves around a limited number of characters, confines itself in time and space, and has a well-plotted narrative that drives its central theme. Within the traditional framework, however, creativity flowers and a fresh and imaginative story emerges. This volume is chock-full with such stories, written by authors well known in their regional languages as well as those who have made a name for themselves in English literary circles. Carefully selected by India's literary giant, the late Khushwant Singh, these pieces represent the best of Indian writing from around the country.

    Beginning in Lahore, the novel enters its first phase with Mariam struggling to retain the memories of her dead grandfather so engrained within her.With willful and determined self-assurance, she leaves for America in search of better days, carrying these memories with her. But encounters with strangers in an unfamiliar land leave Mariam confused and vulnerable. In the midst of forging new paths, she learns of the disappearance of her younger brother, Abdullah, in America.A reverse journeying then begins as she travels backwards to her roots to confront what she once left behind, in order to find the answers she is looking for. Against the backdrop of unyielding social institutions threatened by change and independent individuals, Mariam vows that she will not stop looking for her brother.Ashes, Wine and Dust describes a young woman’s exploration of self-identity through the invisible ropes of social customs, stereotypes and love. As love in all forms is tested in the most strenuous of ways, disappearance in turn, becomes the less chosen road towards a self-discovery.

    Millions displaced, thousands slaughtered, families divided and redefined, as home became alien land and the unknown became home. So much has been said about it but there is still no writer, storyteller or poet who has been able to explain the madness of Partition. Using the oral narratives of four generations of people - mainly Pakistanis but also some Indians - Anam Zakaria, a Pakistani researcher, attempts to understand how the perception of Partition and the 'other' has evolved over the years. Common sense dictates that the bitter memories of Partition would now be forgotten and new relationships would have been forged over the years, but that is not always the case. The memories of Partition have been repackaged through state narratives, and attitudes have only hardened over the years. Post-Partition events - wars, religious extremism, terrorism - have left new imprints on 1947. This book documents the journey of Partition itself - after Partition.

    With the intimacy and good humor available only to the most fearless and open-eyed reporters, Schmidle narrates what was arguably the most turbulent period of Pakistan’s recent history, a time when President Pervez Musharraf lost his power and the Taliban found theirs, and when Americans began to realize that Pakistan’s fate is inextricably linked with our own.In February 2006 Schmidle had traveled to Pakistan hoping to learn about the place dubbed “the most dangerous country in the world.” It was while there that he befriended a radical cleric (who became an enemy of the state and was killed), came to crave the smell of tear gas (because it assured him that he was sufficiently close to the action), and in the end, was deported by the Pakistani authorities, managed to get back into the country, and was chased out a second time.

    With almost 200 million people, a 500,000-man army, nuclear weapons, and a large diaspora in Britain and North America, Pakistan is central to the hopes of jihadis and the fears of their enemies. Yet the greatest short-term threat to Pakistan is not Islamist insurgency as such, but the actions of the United States, and the greatest long-term threat is ecological change. Anatol Lieven's book is a magisterial investigation of this highly complex and often poorly understood country: its regions, ethnicities, competing religious traditions, varied social landscapes, deep political tensions, and historical patterns of violence; but also its surprising underlying stability, rooted in kinship, patronage, and the power of entrenched local elites. Engagingly written, combining history and profound analysis with reportage from Lieven's extensive travels as a journalist and academic, Pakistan: A Hard Country is both utterly compelling and deeply revealing.

    Here are the hidden dramatic realities of the upper class, the undertow of religion, revealing the truth sometimes spoken in hushed whispers, more often swept away by the flourish of silk saris at extravagant dinner parties . . . or perhaps never mentioned at all.Often tragic, always youthful, yet never what those in the West expect, here in fully realized first-person prose are the lives of Ayla, the protagonist, and her boundaries and customs, as well as those of her friends: Alia, oppressed by her wealthy, overly conservative parents, and Tanzeela, a teenager trapped in an abusive arranged marriage. From silk saris to bombings; from fundamentalism to American sympathy; from Dior makeup to desperate poverty; from sexual abuse to religious taboos, the world of Ayla, in her late teens, struggling in the real world of modern-day Pakistan, is anything but simple.Silk Tether is a revealing, truthful, poignant novel destined to become a must-read by westerners seeking to understand the complex world of Islamic fundamentalist countries.

    But neither Partition nor prostitution gave birth to the genius of Saadat Hasan Manto. They only furnished him with an occasion to reveal the truth of the human condition.My Name Is Radha is a path-breaking selection of stories which delves deep into Manto’s creative world. In this singular collection, the focus rests on Manto the writer. It does not draft him into being Manto the commentator. Muhammad Umar Memon’s inspired choice of Manto’s best-known stories, along with those less talked about, and his precise and elegant translation showcase an astonishing writer being true to his calling.

    It is also the most violent. Since the mid-1980s, it has endured endemic political conflict and criminal violence, which revolve around control of the city and its resources (votes, landand bhatta-protection money). These struggles for the city have become ethnicized. Karachi, often referred to as a Pakistan in miniature, has become increasingly fragmented, socially as well as territorially.Despite this chronic state of urban political warfare, Karachi is the cornerstone of the economy of Pakistan. Gayer's book is an attempt to elucidate this conundrum. Against journalistic accounts describing Karachi as chaotic and ungovernable, he argues that there is indeed order of a kind in thecity's permanent civil war. Far from being entropic, Karachi's polity is predicated upon organisational, interpretative and pragmatic routines that have made violence manageable for its populations. Whether such ordered disorder is viable in the long term remains to be seen, but for now Karachiworks despite-and sometimes through-violence.

    A stunning, immense beautiful novel about courage, family and the meaning of love, when everything seems lost… In sixteen-year-old Abida’s small Pakistani village, there are age-old rules to live by, and her family’s honour to protect. And, yet, her spirit is defiant and she yearns to make a home with the man she loves. When the unthinkable happens, Abida faces the same fate as other young girls who have chosen unacceptable alliances – certain, public death. Fired by a fierce determination to resist everything she knows to be wrong about the society into which she was born, and aided by her devoted father, Jamil, who puts his own life on the line to help her, she escapes to Lahore and then disappears. Jamal goes to Lahore in search of Abida – a city where the prejudices that dominate their village take on a new and horrifying form – and father and daughter are caught in a world from which they may never escape. Moving from the depths of rural Pakistan, riddled with poverty and religious fervour, to the dangerous streets of over-populated Lahore, No Honour is a story of family, of the indomitable spirit of love in its many forms … a story of courage and resilience, when all seems lost, and the inextinguishable fire that lights one young woman’s battle for change.

    This collection of the works of Iqbal, considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Urdu language, showcases the musicality of style and unique rhyme and assonance that has made his work memorable. A lengthy introduction, discussing the important aspects of Iqbal's life and art, is also included.

    A mother is horrified when she learns that her daughter wants to marry her American boyfriend. An American housewife living in Lahore has a tempestuous affair with a Pakistani minister. An aged matriarch travels to the USA to discover she must confront a traumatic memory from her past.Finely nuanced, and laced with Sidhwas sharply comic observations, this is a stellar collection of tales from one of the subcontinents most important and beloved writers.

    

    Rock & Roll Jihad is the story of his incredible journey. Facing down angry mullahs and oppressive dictators who wanted all music to be banned from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Salman Ahmad rocketed to the top of the music charts, bringing Westernstyle rock and pop to Pakistani teenagers for the first time. His band Junoon became the U2 of Asia, a sufi - rock group that broke boundaries and sold a record number of albums. But Salman's story began in New York, where he spent his teen years learning to play guitar, listening to Led Zeppelin, hanging out at rock clubs and Beatles Fests, making American friends, and dreaming of rock-star fame. That dream seemed destined to die when his family returned to Pakistan and Salman was forced to follow the strictures of a newly religious -- and stratified -- society. He finished medical school, met his soul mate, and watched his beloved funkytown of Lahore transform with the rest of Pakistan under the rule of Zia into a fundamentalist dictatorship: morality police arrested couples holding hands in public, Little House on the Prairie and Live Aid were banned from television broadcasts, and Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers proliferated on college campuses via the Afghani resistance to Soviet occupation in the north. Undeterred, the teenage Salman created his own underground jihad: his mission was to bring his beloved rock music to an enthusiastic new audience in South Asia and beyond. He started a traveling guitar club that met in private Lahore spaces, mixing Urdu love poems with Casio synthesizers, tablas with Fender Stratocasters, and ragas with power chords, eventually joining his first pop band, Vital Signs. Later, he founded Junoon, South Asia's biggest rock band, which was followed to every corner of the world by a loyal legion of fans called Junoonis. As his music climbed the charts, Salman found himself the target of religious fanatics and power-mad politicians desperate to take him and his band down. But in the center of a new generation of young Pakistanis who go to mosques as well as McDonald's, whose religion gives them compassion for and not fear of the West, and who see modern music as a "rainbow bridge" that links their lives to the rest of the world, nothing could stop Salman's star from rising. Today, Salman continues to play music and is also a UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador, traveling the world as a spokesperson and using the lessons he learned as a musical pioneer to help heal the wounds between East and West -- lessons he shares in this illuminating memoir.

    Certainly the focus is not General Musharraf or even the Army. It is a book about human experience of life; the story of a weak man stumbling through his life; pushed by his fears and dragged by his desires; torn apart by love, transcending with time. It is a book for the youth of this nation, to learn from the mistakes I have made, to see how life twists and moulds each one of us. In this endeavour I have laid my life bare, and exposed myself to all forms of criticism. I did not expect any less. And this is the least price I must pay for the suffering that some of my mistakes have caused to this nation."Autobiography of Lt. Gen. (retd) Shahid Aziz, a central character of the 1999 coup by Pakistan Army against the democratically elected government.