For a country often conceived of only in terms of its troubles with terrorism, extremists and bombs, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that, in Pakistan, all forms of cultural expression have long ceased. But, in the latest edition of Time, there’s an interesting piece by Omar Waraich about the cultural flipside of Pakistan that caught my eye.
As the world’s attention has been drawn to Pakistan’s problems with Islamist militancy in recent years, a flurry of exciting new voices have stepped forward to share with their readers a more intimate and rounded look at the country and its people — winning many plaudits along the way.
Waraich was attending literary festivals recently held in Karachi and Lahore celebrating Pakistani writers and literature about the country. These were neither sanitised nor closeted affairs. One participant, Yassin Musharbash, a German journalist with Die Zeit, read from his novel Radikal containing a scene in which Muslim immigrants are challenged about some of the Qu’ran’s more intemperate and troubling verses.
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