Speak Up

Mohiuddin Zia Siddiqi

In this dictionary of sorts, the author gives simple explanations and meanings of social media terminology and internet-specific abbreviations, which may be quite helpful to anyone who might have scratched their head wondering what ‘bae’ actually means and why somebody is ‘poking’ them. Additional chapters serve as a handy reference to English colloquialisms, most commonly used idioms, worthwhile quotations and proverbs from Japan, Sweden, Russia and more.

My Seven Decades’ Journey Through British India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

Mirza Nurul Huda

An economist and academic, the author revisits his life from learning to write on banana leaves with twig pens and ink made by mixing firewood ash with water, to earning a doctoral degree from Princeton University. After serving in various government capacities in Pakistan, he moved to Bangladesh in 1971 and became advisor to the president, upon whose assassination he served as vice president for four months.

Parchhaiyyan

Shahid Hussain

In this collection of previously published profiles of a wide assortment of personalities, the author writes on former editor of Dawn Saleem Asmi, respected academic Dr Syed Jaffer Ahmed, diplomat and former ambassador Dr Masuma Hasan, human rights activist I.A. Rahman, American journalist and global affairs correspondent Laura King and many more from the worlds of politics, the arts and humanities. The book also includes discussions on the water wars, the Indus Water Treaty and self-censorship.

Naadeeda Shehr

Shehla Naqvi

In 1972, Italian writer and journalist Italo Calvino published his novel Le città invisibili, which was translated into English as Invisible Cities. Presented as a dialogue between Mongol emperor Kublai Khan and Venetian explorer Marco Polo, the book consists of brief poems describing 55 fictitious cities, which are allegories for culture, language, memory and the general nature of the human experience. The book now comes to the Urdu audience courtesy this translation by poet, fiction writer and translator Naqvi.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 18th, 2022