LAHORE: There is a constant lament about the dying reading culture in Pakistan as well as across the world, especially physical books or hard copies, but publication of the new novel of Mohammed Hanif has vehemently rejected this notion because its first edition of 2,000 copies has almost been sold in the first week of publication. It was also a topic of discussion in two sessions on the second day of the Faiz Festival at Alhamra.

The impression also looked like a false alert with a rush of people who thronged the Lahore International Book Fair (LIBF) that ended at Expo Centre last Sunday.

The publisher of Hanif’s fourth novel Rebel English Academy said that the sale was unprecedented and they had only the example of Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi’s books which used to sell like hot cakes as did Hanif’s Rebel English Academy.

On the launch of the novel moderated by Navid Shahzad on Saturday, Hanif denied that it was an attempt to bring Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ‘back to life’.

“It (the novel) does begin at the night of his hanging but it’s not really about Bhutto. It’s about common people and some of those common people are civilians and some are in uniform who prefer not to wear uniform because they have that kind of duty.”

He said it was the last day of his exams, thinking that now life would be an endless party but he did not know what’s going on in your country. “I came out and the streets were deserted. It was for me for time as a child that people were visibly scared and that shock stayed with me.”

Hanif said there were a lot of people who were excited and others who had this disbelief that this hanging of ZAB could not have happened and they included those people who hated Bhutto. “In any case, my post-exam holidays had been ruined.”

Replying to a Navid’s question, he made it clear that there was no sense of loss or trauma in him as he was too young to know about all politics or judiciary.

Speaking about his writing style, the novelist said it was chaotic because he doesn’t know what’s going to happen in the next chapter unlike the writers who do structured writing and follow their writing like a map, knowing where they are headed to.

“Every single character that I have killed I liked (doing that). I like killing characters and some of them I actually love killing. Good thing about writing is that if you want to kill somebody, you can do that or put him in a torture chamber. You feel like having some kind of power that only some people have in this country.”

He agreed with Navid that he really went after so many tangents that it took him a very long time to write a novel, on average seven/eight years.

When asked about the title of the novel, he explained he was always fascinated with the notion and noticed that most schoolchildren won’t pass 10th standard and only some of them would go to college and those going to college and learning English would do better in life. “I have always been struck with this notion of social mobility and the role of language to make yourself better. I was also fascinated with that notion that how language does work as a tool of power. I was trying to look at that through this ‘English academy’”. He said satirically that English was not divisive as there is nobody in Pakistan who doesn’t want their children not to learn English, everybody wants their children to learn this language.

To the question of the disturbing image of a man burning himself in the novel, he explained that during his childhood when the novel was set in, some people did burn themselves. He went on to say that besides such images, “there is lot of fun in the book. There are people who are falling in love and there are many kinds of people in the book”.

When asked about a female character and whether he sympathised with her, he replied, “I don’t think writing novels is about sympathising with people or liking or disliking them. They are my characters and creation. I have one responsibility to them that I should be true to them, not somebody’s idea of how a man, woman or socialist should be.” He said even the religious people or liberal had many shades.

In another session, Punjabi Satire, Mohammed Hanif said, “writing a book is a very solitary process and so is reading”. He went on to say that some readers read too much in the novel (A Case of Exploding Mangoes) when it was translated into Urdu, calling some parts “Wahayat”. He refused there was a parallel in the historical event that the book started with and current times. He said novel writing was a kind of personal quest; it was more than political happenings that keep on changing quickly.

Replying to a question of the audience, he did not believe Jihad bil Qalam and added that moral obligation did play a part in journalism when you try to convey a message or in joining in political party but “moral obligation for a novelist is that when you choose a character, you try to stay true to that character, be good to their background and that you should tell the story in a way that readers enjoy it, laugh and weep and want to read the next chapter”.

About the objective of writing a novel, he said, “There may be people writing to bring about revolution or telling the condition of a country but I take a small character that stays with you and I try to portray it”.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2026