The story of Husain and Zammarrud fallen in the grip of the Assassins take us back to the last days of Hasan Bin Sabah's merciless followers, at the end of which the sect's stronghold, the famous fort of Alamoot, was destroyed by the even more merciless Mongol hordes. Sharar writes famously in the style of a Walter Scott novel, the novel itself being a new literary form in his day. But there are shades of an earlier indigenous genre - the Dastaan - in his work. Yet although he tells a gripping tale, part Scott and part Dastaan, he is not unaware of character. Husain may be credulous, and smitten silly by his love for Zammarrud, but he can still ask Shaikh Vujoodi intelligent questions which the Shaikh can only parry by the display of great wrath and superhuman knowledge. Husain's credulity in accepting his answers immediately has a lot to do with his fear that he would not be allowed to visit his beloved in 'Paradise.' There is a definite modern streak in Sharar's work. His treatment of Zamarrud is different from the usual portrayal of female characters in his day. Zamarrud has a mind of her own. She is observant and intelligent and capable of rebuffing her lover when he sounds credulous and foolish. No old fashioned perceptions of female 'duty' or the superior status of men holds her back from realizing that she is more clear-headed than Husain. She is moreover not mild of manner or adulatory of her man, as the prototypes of female perfection tend to be in Urdu literature of the day. Yet non of this detracts from her femininity, as she runs around 'like a delicate, fleet-footed doe' but fully determined to have her way. Much has been written about the Assassins in English and other languages. Sharar's novel has its own charm, and given a chance it should become a very popular book. Translated into Tajik, Sharar's works have quite a lot of readers in Tajikistan, where they are also the subject of a Ph.D. dissertation by Vladimir Lanikin.

    Mukhtar Masood brings into this text his close observation of the years of upheaval preceding the partition of India and the end of Victorian rule. The books details the events, forces, people, and ideas that lead to the creation of Pakistan.

    The novel is so exciting that the reader will love to read it more than once. Feudal system of undivided India, British, Hindu & Muslims are main characters of this novel.

    An amazing, sui generis book, River of Fire spans two and a half millennia. Set during four Indian epochs (the classical, the medieval, the colonial, and the modern post-national), the novel is a meditation on history and human nature, tracing four souls through time. Each section is linked by characters who bear, in every period, the same names: Gautam, Champa, Kamal, and Cyril. Gautam (appearing first as a student of mysticism at the Forest University of Shravasti in the 4th century B.C.E.) and Champa (throughout embodying the enigmatic experience of Indian women) begin and end the novel; Muslim Kamal appears mid-way through, as the Muslims did, and loses himself in the Indian landscape; and Cyril, the Englishman, appears later still. In different eras, different relations from among the four -- romance and war, possession and dispossession. Yet together the characters reflect the oneness of human nature: amidst the nationalist and religious upheavals of Indian history, Hyder argues for a culture that is inclusive.Interweaving parables, legends, dreams, diaries, and letters, Hyder's prose is lyrical and witty. There is really no book like River of Fire. Qurratulain Hyder was awarded the Bharatiya Gnanpith, India's highest literary award, in 1989, and here is her masterpiece, her broadest canvas and her finest art.

    Ashfaq Ahmed is a consummate master of words.

    Both are poles apart in terms of spiritual awakening. Destiny maneuvers their lives to cross each other’s paths, until Salaar falls in love with Imama after facing a horrifying experience that totally changes the course of his life.It was published in Shuaa Digest from July 2003 to February 2004.

    Gidh is the Urdu word for a vulture and Raja is a Hindi synonym for king. The name anticipates the kingdom of vultures. In fact, parallel to the main plot of the novel, an allegorical story of such a kingdom is narrated. The metaphor of the vulture as an animal feeding mostly on the carcasses of dead animals is employed to portray the trespassing of ethical limits imposed by the society or by the religion.Bano Qudsia has written this novel drawing on the religious concept of Haraam and Halaal. Many readers tend to interpret Raja Gidh as a sermon, in which Bano Qudsia puts forth her theory of hereditary transmission of Haraam genes. Naturally the plot is woven to support the thesis. In the opinion of many readers and critics she manages to convince them that the pursuance of Haraam, be it financial, moral or emotional, results in the deterioration of a person's normality in some sense. She seems to suggest that the abnormality is transferred genetically to the next generation.Apart from the above implication the novel has many social, emotional and psychological aspects. The nostalgic narration of the historical Government College Lahore and of the Lawrence Garden Lahore lights upon the days of seventies and eighties.Bano Qudsia is among those Urdu writers who would think ten times before writing a sentence. But she does not sacrifice the flow of the narrative anywhere in this novel. Her characters are not black and white ones as some of the critics would like to suggest. Every sensitive reader who has attended a college or a university in a Pakistani setting is bound to find some similarities between themselves and one of the characters.Plot: Seemin Shah, hailing from an upper middle class family, falls in love with her handsome class fellow Aftab in the MA Sociology class at Government College Lahore. Seemin is a modern and attractive urban girl and attracts most of her male class fellows, including the narrator (abdul)Qayyum and the young liberal professor Suhail. Aftab belongs to a Kashmiri business family. Though he also loves her, he can not rise above his family values and succumbs to his parent's pressure to marry someone against his wishes and leave for London to look after his family business. Now the long story of separation begins.

    It is the first novel of Imran Series, a best-selling Urdu spy novels series created by Pakistani writer Ibn-e-Safi. It was published in October 1955.The story is about a terrifying building where a dead boy is found and then a story full of suspense and laughs begins. Suspense because of the cause of death and secret of the building and laughs because of Imran’s behavior which is very comic.Captain Fiaz, Superintendent of Intelligence bureau starts to solve the case but he is always in need of Ali Imran to solve the cases and this time also Imran, with the help of his sharp mind and power of decision, solve the case and disclose Sir Jahangir, a well reputed and honored man, as an agent of enemy. Imran resolve the case of some foreign office’s very sensitive papers which were robbed by some criminal elements long time ago.

    Ishwar Singh, a Sikh fails to make love to his mistress. She suspects him of infidelity and In a fit of jealousy she stabs her husband with his own dagger. While dying, Ishwar Singh admits his crime of attempted rape with an unconscious Muslim girl, who was actually dead.Hence the title "Cold Flesh".

    Known for her charm, wit and beauty, Umrao Jaan was also a talented poet, dancer and a singer. Rich in historical detail, the audiobook transports us in old Lucknow, where decadence was nothing more than a part of day-to-day life.

    Set in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of a country and a family riven by war, and features one of fiction's most original heroines.Honor Harris is only eighteen when she first meets Richard Grenvile, proud, reckless - and utterly captivating. But following a riding accident, Honor must reconcile herself to a life alone. As Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, Honor remains true to himAs the English Civil war is waged across the country, Richard rises through the ranks of the army, marries and makes enemies, and Honor remains true to him, and finally discovers the secret of Menabilly.Decades later, an undaunted Sir Richard, now a general serving King Charles I, finds her. Finally they can share their passion in the ruins of her family's great estate on the storm-tossed Cornish coast-one last time before being torn apart, never to embrace again.

    The principal narrator of the saga, which extends over six hundred years, is a bawdy, ageing reprobate who loves Delhi as much as he does the hijra whore Bhagmati - half man, half woman with sexual inventiveness and energy of both the sexes. Travelling through time, space and history to 'discover' his beloved city, the narrator meets a myriad of people-poets and princes, saints and sultans, temptresses and traitors, emperors and eunuchs - who have shaped and endowed Delhi with its very special mystique And as we accompany the narrator on his epic journey we find the city of emperors transformed and immortalized in our minds for ever.

    In Urdu, basti means any space, from the most intimate to the most universal, in which groups of people come together to try to live together, and the universal question at the heart of the book is how to constitute a common world. What brings people together? What tears them apart? “When the world was still all new, when the sky was fresh and the earth not yet soiled, when trees breathed through centuries and ages spoke around in the voices of birds, how astonished he was that everything was so new and yet looked so old”—so the book begins, with a mythic, even mystic, vision of harmony, as the hero, Zakir, looks back on his childhood in a subcontinent that had not yet been divided between Muslims and Hindus. But Zakir is abruptly evicted from this paradise—real or imagined—into the maelstrom of history. The new country of Pakistan is born, separating him once and for all from the woman he loves, and in a jagged and jarring sequence of scenes we witness a nation and a psyche torn into existence only to be torn apart again and again by political, religious, economic, linguistic, personal, and sexual conflicts—in effect, a world of loneliness. Zakir, whose name means “remember,” serves as the historian of this troubled place, while the ties he maintains across the years with old friends—friends who run into one another in cafés and on corners and the odd other places where history takes a time-out—suggest that the possibility of reconciliation is not simply a dream. The characters wait for a sign that minds and hearts may still meet. In the meantime, the dazzling artistry of Basti itself gives us reason to hope against hope.

    

    Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets—Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II—who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king’s son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untamable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.