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Archives
Category Archives: Book Reviews
1971 as seen by a planter’s wife
Reviewed by Naeem Sadiq
Sips from a Broken Teacup
By Raihana A Hasan
Ushba Publishing International, Pakistan
ISBN 978-969-9154-18-8
2011. 429pp.
The rattling narrow-gauge Surma train that carried a young urban bride to a far away and unknown world of tea plantations stopped at the deserted Shamshernagar Railway Station on a dark wintry night of January 1962. Little did the disembarking passenger know that her prolific and perceptive mind was already capturing the first outlines of what was to appear in the form of a book some fifty years later.
Raihana Hasan, the author
Raihana Hasan could not have chosen a more thoughtful, apt and immaculate title for her captivating book, Sips from a Broken Teacup. Each word depicting delicately woven themes that stretch from reminiscence of life as a tea planter’s wife to the traumatic events that preceded the break-up of Pakistan and finally the drama and the ordeal as the author and her family escape from then East to West Pakistan.
Sips from a Broken Teacup shows tell-tale signs of a meticulous and devoted diary writer who has Continue reading
NON-FICTION: Keeping a record
Reviewed By Zubeida Mustafa
SALEEM Asmi has worn many hats. Beginning his professional life as a sub-editor in The Pakistan Times in 1959, he rose to be the editor of Dawn. Versatility is his virtue, which means his writings always have a freshness about them. Having known him professionally as a newsperson demonstrating his skills in the newsroom, and later as the editor of Dawn, one who was always willing to go an extra mile to test political waters, I was happy when I saw the collection of his writings from the early years, Saleem Asmi: Interviews, Articles, Reviews. The collection sheds as much light on the writer as the numerous personalities he interviews or writes about. We now see Asmi at his best, as an erudite critic of arts, culture and music.
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Book Review: This Is Not That Dawn
By Zubeida Mustafa
The partition of India in 1947 was an epochal event. It inducted the post-war era of decolonisation that came to form a landmark in world history. It also raised popular expectations: the people would be the beneficiaries of the promised 3D phenomena of decolonisation, democratisation and development. Leaders decided the fates of nations and the people provided the backdrop in the shape of slogan-raising crowds cheering the demagogues. Continue reading
Pakistan through a journalist’s lens
Reviewed by Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
PAKISTAN has been described as a dangerous country for journalists. Since January 2010, 15 journalists have lost their lives here. But more than that, it is not a country easy to write about. So riddled is it with contradictions and so strong are the emotions it evokes that a writer must have superhuman capacity to be dispassionate and write without social, political and ethnic biases.
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Food: an area in which Pakistan excels
Reviewed by Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
PAKISTAN is famous internationally for its cuisine. The versatility and richness in their culinary style and contents make Pakistani restaurants popular eating spots abroad for those in search of exciting and unusual flavours to tickle their taste buds. Shamsi Qurashi, the editor of Heirloom Recipes from Pakistan, says she wanted to produce “something beautiful about Pakistan and its ancient cultural heritage” that would be a pleasant change from the doom and gloom we are surrounded with.
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The whole truth?
Reviewed By Zubeida Mustafa Source: Dawn Paradise Beneath Her Feet captures succinctly the contradictions in some Muslim societies where religion is a powerful force that exercises an overarching influence on the socio-cultural, economic and political life of people. As women … Continue reading
Richness of diversity
Reviewed By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
PROF James Ron of Carleton University, Ottawa, complains that mainstream students in Canada are oblivious to the role of religion in contemporary life. He says that they achieve competence in secular politics but have no interest in learning the basics of different religions, even their own.
This is an interesting observation on Canada. But it holds true only partially for most young people in our society. Given the religious environment and our religion-centric syllabi, students pick up quite a bit of knowledge of their own faith. But unfortunately they learn little about other religions — even those of the minorities living in their midst.
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Change for the better?
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
THIS little book is the story of the `Third Estate` of the world. Borrowing the term from French history, Prof Jamal Naqvi uses it to refer to the Third World, that is the poor countries that were decolonised in the post-war years.
They shared the characteristic of being underprivileged, deprived and oppressed as were the masses in pre-revolutionary France who were dominated by the clergy and the nobility.
Prof Naqvi was deeply involved in the politics of the Left in Pakistan until 1990. He has not attempted to trace the history of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the ideological context in the book under review.
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Futile chase for justice?
Reviewed By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
They Hang 12 women in my
portrait gallery
By Syeda S. Hameed
Women Unlimited,
New Delhi, India
ISBN 81-88965-26-X
183pp. Indian Rs275
Violence against women has now come to be recognised as a widespread phenomenon that has historical antecedents. As many as 69 per cent of women have reported being physically abused by a man in their lifetimes, the UNFPA reports. Hence there have been organised and collective efforts by the United Nations to address this problem in a bid to check it. With so much being said and written about gender-related violence, one would not have expected a book on this subject to shock its readers.
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What ails education in Pakistan?
Reviewed By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
The major factor in the destruction of education in Pakistan has been the lack of commitment on the part of the government.
EDUCATION, one of the most neglected sectors in Pakistan, has received more attention from experts and laypeople than from policymakers. It has been investigated very often because the negative impact of this neglect is now being felt in every walk of life.
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