LAHORE: English language poet and critic Adrian Husain says there is a plethora of stereotypes in Pakistani fiction in English. It’s unreal, contrived and looks like a set-up, keeping the market consideration in mind. Pakistani novel has gone political and it is the result of self-prescribed, artificial writing.

He was reading his essay “Reality, Perception and Symptom” during the session, titled Pakistani Fiction in English, on the first day of the Pakistani English Conference at Kinnaird College on Wednesday.

Dr Adrian says we need to think critically about fiction. “My concern is that people have forgotten that fiction has esoteric happening. We don’t ask question what constitutes reality. We must address this issue and we must return to critical theory.”

He said fiction must be seen as literature first and then as Pakistani fiction.

Talking about the breed of novelists that emerged in last one decade or so, Adrian termed Mohsin Hamid’s novels unreal. “The best example of this is the Reluctant Fundamentalist as it barely fictionalises what is little more than slightly sham, symptomatic reality. Much of the novel is mere reportage and there is no historical reality.”

He says Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes was an explosive moment but it had generic flaws. It does what Giles Foden’s novel Last King of Scotland does, i.e. mixing reality with fiction.

“Real and symbolic don’t gel well, generically speaking. It’s a mismatch.”

Adrian said Kamila Shamsie initially showed promise but failed to continue with it later on. “Nadeem Aslam, in his most recent novel, also followed the suit and took the plot to the border area of Afghanistan at the time of 9/11. Daniyal Moeenuddin was termed Chekhovian but he lacks the elements of Chekhov.” He said besides terrorism and fundamentalism, Pakistani society has a rich old tradition which must be explored in fiction.

Dr Cara Cilano from the University of North Carolina read out her paper, “Amidst the Tension: Mobility and Non-Muslim Minorities in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India”. She said the novel focused on female characters, their mobility and sexualisation and evils at the time of the Partition. The disintegration of social order and its replacement with alternative order had been made the subject of it.

Dr Waseem Anwar from the FCC read out his paper “Literary Public Sphere/s and the History of Pakistani Literature in English”. He called for looking at the history with a sense of freedom as it’s not just history but histories, new narratives, history of margins and other grey areas that needed to be explored in English fiction.

He referred to a paper on history of Pakistan literature in English written by Alamgir Hashmi in 1978 and Tariq Rehman’s book on the same subject first published in 1991.

“If any other history has been written in any form since 1990, its either invisible or of low quality. There are only some introductions to critical works, some research papers, anthologies and literary journals which took on the subject,” Dr Waseem said, adding that not much had been done to write history of Pakistani English literature since 1990.

Dr Saeedur Rehman while reading a paper on Omer Shahid Hamid’s novels traced the history of criminal characters in South Asian English literature.

“During the colonial era, the state needed its justification of ruling foreign lands by presenting the natives as unruly people,” he said, adding that against the Soviet Union, the states created jihadist but when it was removed, the same states started considering the jihadists as part of the problem. The same phenomenon was seen in Omar Shahid Hamid’s novel as there was confusion whether the state produced the criminals or the criminals made the state. Dr Nadia Anjum read a paper on “Reclaiming the Lost Punjab through Athar Tahir’s Prose”. Uzma Ghumman was another speaker who also presented paper on Shoaib bin Hassan.

At the end of the day, a prose and poetry evening was held. Ilona Yusuf, Adrian Husain, Mina Malik, Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Athar Tahir and Navid Shahzad recited their poems. In Pakistani English fiction, Adrian termed Mohsin Hamid the best among his peers.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2016