Mirza Athar Baig is the author of Ghulam Bagh and Sifar Say Aik Tak, among other works of fiction. He teaches philosophy at Government College University, LahoreWhat are you reading these days?My reading swings between literature and philosophy with occasional digressions to basic sciences. So these days, it is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuze and Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes by Arthur. I. Miller in the same order.

Which books are on your bedside table?Being a Sherlock Holmes addict, almost all the collections of Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle; Edgar Allen Poe, Selected Tales (Penguin); Phundenay by Sadat Hassan Manto and Waris Shah’s Heer. A recent delightful addition is Sahibs Who Loved India by Khushwant Singh.

Which titles are on your bucket list of books?The list is a bit too ambitious perhaps but on the philosophical side it includes Maurice Blanchot’s The Space of Literature and Alain Badiou’s Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy. In works of fiction, Life: A User’s Manual by George Perec and The Storyteller by Mario Vargas Llosa. I also dream of reading Europe: A History by Norman Davies but it may very well turn into a 1,392 pages nightmare.

What is the one book/author you feel everyone must read?Everyone obviously means everyone. Unfortunately I do not know of any such panacea book, and I doubt any such could exist for anyone, but if it does it should be immediately banned because it would cause great suffering for humanity. The book of alphabets could be one such book, but then the choice of remaining illiterate should also remain open.

What are you planning to reread?Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, a remarkable though not very well known work on the neurological roots of paradoxical thinking. Perhaps I would like to reread some of the plays by Brecht and Ionesco as well.

What is the one book you read because you thought it would make you appear smarter?The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington.

What is the one book you started reading but could not finish?The Location of Culture by Homi K. Bhabha, and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. I couldn’t finish them due to my own lack of determination; will give both the works another try.

What is your favourite childhood book or story?Omar Ayaar was one big favorite; add to that Treasure Island by Robert Louise Stevenson and The Coral Island by Ballantyne.And then there were some story books such as Thagoon ki Kehaniyan, Choroon ki Kehaniyan, Khazanoon ki Kehaniyaa, a whole series of some forty odd books, probably published by Paisa Akhbar, Lahore, something which has disappeared now.