Q: What books are you currently reading?

A: I am currently reading a book on the life and times of Jam Saqi, a prominent leader of the Communist Party of Pakistan who played a key role in the struggle for social justice and democracy in the recent history of Pakistan. The book was sent to me by Ahmed Salim who has authored the book together with Nuzhat Abbas. I find the book interesting because it is a record of the valiant but little known struggle of ordinary men and women in the difficult times of our country, and also because several people mentioned in the book were known to me.

Q: Which book(s) do you return to again and again?

A: The classics, especially of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Leo Tolstoy had a great understanding of human nature, and sensitively describes feelings and emotions of the characters he portrays, so that readers not only understand why they act as they do but can also identify with and recognise some of those feelings in themselves and in others.

The writings of Dostoevsky are filled with intense drama that immediately grips the imagination. The situations and characters he creates continue to live in the reader’s mind for a long time. I don’t know if this is actually so, or if it is my own, purely subjective impression, but I think that the passions and emotions depicted by Russian writers resonate with us in this part of the world more than writings from other places.

Q: Is there a great Pakistani novel?

A: There seems to be consensus that Aag Ka Darya by Qurratulain Hyder is the greatest Pakistani novel, but having lived through the partition and the bloodshed that accompanied it, I fear it would be too depressing, so I have never read it.

Q: Which living poet, writer or dramatist do you admire most?

A: Fahmida Riaz, without a doubt. I consider Fahmida Riaz to be the greatest living writer today because she writes about subjects that are relevant and matter to us as a society. This she does in poetry the language of which is aesthetic and expressive and, to my mind, rivals that of the great classical poets of the subcontinent.

Q: Has a character from a book ever stayed with you?

A: Several characters, but I suppose the characters from Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers and Anna Karenina.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2017