Q. What are you currently reading?

A: I don’t read much fiction, I read a lot of essays. And normally what I pick up are anthologies of essays, so that’s different authors. So I’ve got the Art of the Personal Essay - I like personal essays because sometimes they’re about books or authors, or the writer’s or the author’s personal take on something.

I’m waiting to finish Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, which is about language, and basically about writers. It describes the work of writers, but each chapter has a glossary at the end, and what the author’s done is document words which are disappearing from the English language. He said he did it because he found that the new dictionaries are taking out certain words which they feel are no longer relevant and which are very often terms to do with nature or landscape. And then they’re being replaced with things that are more to do with computers or technology. So he wanted to document and preserve those words.

In looking for those words or putting them together he says, he discovered that every area has its own, not necessarily dialect but words which are used because they’re indigenous to a certain place and they describe landmarks.

I also read a lot of poetry, and again, very often anthologies. I really enjoy Gerard Manley Hopkins and in translation I’ve been reading Noshi Gilani and Afzal Ahmed Syed’s Rococo and Other Worlds.

[The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks] are essays by a surgeon who also writes, mostly about how the brain adapts to various situations. If you’ve had an accident or a stroke and your brain is affected in a certain way - how it develops coping mechanisms which are totally different but which help you to adapt and to cope for the loss you’ve had.

Q. Are there any classic works you couldn’t get through?

A: I read TS Eliot very late, because I found him very dense. Actually, no - I grew up with his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which I still delve into, off and on, because it’s such a pleasure to read it. And I read his shorter poems, but it took me a while to read The Waste Land.

Urdu poetry I read bilingually, so I read the English translations and then I read the Urdu for the music. Reading it is difficult, but appreciating the music isn’t. Reading it in English is not difficult, but the Urdu text for me is a bit harder. I’ve read Ghalib, and I don’t think I find Ghalib difficult, I find him philosophical. I enjoy reading him.

Q. Are there any novels that you’ve particularly enjoyed or re-read?

A: Maybe Pride and Prejudice. There are some novels that I really enjoy. There’s Lila by Marilynne Robinson which is about a young woman who comes from a very disadvantaged background, and it’s set in the Depression era, in the States. And she travels from town to town, so she’s really down and out and she’s very miserable, and eventually she comes to a town and she finds an empty house and she lives there, and she meets the clergyman and eventually, they fall in love - he’s much older. In some way, it parallels - because this young woman is searching for something, not even religion but maybe the idea of religion or divinity, and that’s described through the Bible, but in a very indirect way. It’s very beautifully written.

[Mario Vargas Ilosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter] is really funny. He’s a Central American writer. This one is funny and at the same time it’s kind of surreal. This I’ve gone back to, maybe once at least.

[The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver] is about the life of a family in the Congo. The family is like a mission family and they go to the Congo when there’s a revolution, and they don’t realise it because they’re living in the middle of the jungle, so the armies pass them by but they’re not even cognisant of what’s going on around them. The preacher himself is eccentric, and the wife, who has several children, doesn’t have the time or the wherewithal - she doesn’t get out of the house as such, because there are no basic amenities even - to realise what’s going on until much later, when she leaves the place.

I’ve read and re-read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, especially The General in his Labyrinth and Love in the Time of Cholera.

Q. Are there any works or characters that have stayed with you?

A: Louis de Bernières’ Birds Without Wings. It describes the First World War, but it’s set in Asia Minor. I think it’s set in the north of Turkey, but it is Asia Minor, because what the author is trying to show is there are these areas in which the Greeks and the Turks are living together, and a little bit of sea separates both coasts, so there’s a lot of overlapping. But when war happens, what does it do to people? How does it divide them and destroy them? That’s what interested me about [The Poisonwood Bible].

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2017