Muneeza Shamsie On The Brave New World Of Pakistani Writing In English

Muneeza Shamsie is one of Pakistan바카라�s indomitable writers. She is an eminent critic, a bibliographer, a literary journalist and a reputed editor. She belongs to a great lineage of activists, authors and academics that traces its roots to colonial India. Her mother, Jahanara Habibullah (1915-2003), published her memoir first as an English translation and later, in the original Urdu as 바카라�Zindagi ki Yadein: Riyasat Rampur ka Nawabi바카라�. Noted feminist and writer Attia Hosain (1913-1998) was her aunt. Shamsie바카라�s grandmother in Lucknow, feminist and activist Begum Inam Fatima Habibullah, was the author of a travelogue 바카라�Tassuraat-e-Safar-e-Europe바카라� about her journey to Britain in 1924.
The literary tradition in the family continues to date, reaching its heights with the emergence of Kamila Shamsie as one of the world바카라�s leading authors and globally recognized faces. Muneeza Shamsie바카라�s 바카라�Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English바카라� is considered to be the most important work on the evolution of Pakistani English literature. She is a regular contributor to prestigious newspapers, including 바카라�Dawn바카라� and 바카라�Herald바카라� and contributes as a Bibliographical Representative of 바카라�The Journal of Commonwealth Literature바카라�. Ask her about the family tradition beginning from Attia Hosain reaching a peak with the global recognition of Kamila Shamsie바카라�s works and she is quick to clarify that she looks at Kamila바카라�s work as a mother rather than a critic. That is why in her book 바카라�Hybrid Tapestries,바카라� she asked someone else to write the section on Kamila. 바카라�However, I did write a nepotistic memoir-cum-critical essay on 바카라�Sunlight and Salt: The Literary Landscapes of a Divided Family,바카라� in which I wrote of the division of my family into three 바카라� between India, Pakistan and Britain at Independence, and looked at the links and differences between the Partition novels, 바카라�Sunlight on a Broken Column바카라� (1961) by Hosain and 바카라�Salt and Saffron (2000) by Kamila.바카라� 

 

In a broader context, Shamsie finds their respective careers as reflections of the trajectory of South Asian English literature. Attia Hosain, she says, grew up in Lucknow and started to write English fiction in undivided India at a time when there were only a handful of Anglophone fiction writers in the subcontinent, such as RK Narayan, Raja Rao, Ahmed Ali and Mulk Raj Anand. 바카라�She had to address many stylistic and linguistic issues to convey the true experience of her culture, gender and language in English. As such, her fiction made an important contribution to South Asian English writing and diaspora writing: she moved to Britain with her family in 1946. She went on to publish two works of fiction, a story collection, 바카라�Phoenix Fled바카라� and a novel 바카라�Sunlight on a Broken Column바카라� (1961). Both books were well received, but did not reach a wide Anglophone readership, because at this point of time, the concept of 바카라�English literature바카라� was confined to the traditional Anglo-American norm.바카라� says Shamsie.

The proliferation of South Asian English Literature during the 1960s saw a new and inclusive literary discourse that asserted that Anglophone literature from the Commonwealth and previously colonised countries were equal to any. 바카라�Then, there was the influence of the feminist movement, the civil rights movement in America and the voices of increasingly assertive migrant communities in the West. By the late 1970s and the 1980s, the writings of South Asian writers started reaching out to a much wider global audience. This included new post-independence writers living in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as the diaspora writers,바카라� Shamsie says. As a result, new editions of Hosain바카라�s two books were published by Virago Press in 1988, with an introduction by Anita Desai. The continuing interest in Hosain바카라�s work led to a selection of her published and unpublished writings in 바카라�The Distant Traveller바카라� (2013), which was brought out to mark her centenary. The 2021 Virago editions of 바카라�Phoenix Fled바카라� and 바카라�Sunlight on a Broken Column바카라� have introductions by Kamila Shamsie, whose trajectory was very different from Hosain바카라�s. She was born and brought up in Karachi and has often said that she grew up 바카라�with a mother who was constantly typing away바카라� (as a freelance journalist and literary critic) and gave her free access to contemporary novels on her bookshelf. During family trips to London, she would meet Hosain, who showed great interest in the fact that Kamila had decided at a very young age that she wanted to be a writer. However, Hosain did not live long enough to see Kamila getting her first book published. Kamila studied creative writing in America and her MFA thesis became her first novel, 바카라�In the City by the Sea바카라� (1998). 

Meanwhile, Pakistani English fiction had started to draw increasing international attention since the 1980s. This included the novels of Hanif Kureishi, Bapsi Sidhwa, Adam Zameenzad, Nadeem Aslam, the creative memoirs of Sara Suleri and the short fiction of Aamer Hussein. Kamila added to this as a significant new young voice.  She was soon joined, at the turn of the millennium, by a dynamic group of young, talented and award-winning contemporaries, including Mohsin Hamid and Uzma Aslam Khan. Together with Kamila, they would take the Pakistani English fiction to newer heights as would the growing number of writers, who continued to emerge in rapid succession, getting critical acclaim. They include novelists Mohammed Hanif, Musharraf Ali Farooqi, H.M. Naqvi and Daniyal Mueenuddin. Over the years, Kamila continued to develop as a novelist, expand her literary horizons and address a wide range of issues in each of her seven novels: her eighth, 바카라�Best of Friends바카라�, comes out in 2022.  Her novels have found new readers after they have been translated into several languages.
 

Muneeza is considered to be an authority on Pakistani-English literature and her contribution in promoting Pakistani-Anglophone literature has been immense. She finds the recent literature from Pakistani-Anglophone writers highly optimistic. It바카라�s A Brave New World for Pakistani English Novel. 바카라�It seems to be going from strength to strength. The growing number of award-winning Pakistani  English writers is not confined to fiction writers, it also includes dramatists such as Hanif Kureishi, Rukhsana Ahmad and Ayad Akhtar and poets ranging from Moniza Alvi, Imtiaz Dharker, Zaffar Kunial and Shadab Zeest Hashmi,바카라� says Muneeza. Due to the facility of travel, the internet and global trajectories, the sharp dividing lines between the diaspora and resident Pakistani English writers have blurred which, in turn, gives Pakistani English literature a much broader scope. 바카라�It is no longer the literature of the elite confined to the subcontinent, but includes writing by migrants in the Anglophone diaspora from many different walks of life,바카라� she says.
    

Though poetry has been the oldest form of literature, since Victorian times, the novel has replaced it as the dominant genre in Western Literature. Pakistani English novel has received global recognition and acclaim, but Pakistani English poetry couldn바카라�t receive such acceptance and recognition even though the country has produced great poets in Urdu and other languages. 바카라�Anglophone fiction is more widely read than poetry anyway 바카라� and Urdu poetry has the great advantage of having a strong oral tradition so that it reaches millions in the way that English poetry does not,바카라� says Muneeza, adding that contemporary Pakistani English poetry developed much before fiction. During the 1960s and early 1970s, Taufiq Rafat, Kaleem Omar, Adrian Hussein, Maki Kureishi and Salman Tariq Kureishi and others forged a new voice in Pakistani English literature. But, at this time, creative writing in English was mired in a nationalistic debate as many people felt it was no longer 바카라�relevant바카라� since English was a colonial language and the colonials had left.

Of course, much has changed since. In recent years, the Patras Bokhari Award has been awarded to Pakistan-resident poets such as Athar Tahir and Ejaz Rahim. Tahir바카라�s award-winning collection, 바카라�The Last Tea바카라� is written entirely in haiku. Tahir is counted among the contemporary Pakistani English poets who are exploring and employing different poetic forms within a contemporary context. Both Adrian Hussein and US-based Anis Shivani have been experimenting with the sonnet form. Another US-based poet, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, who frequents Pakistan, writes ghazals and qasidas in English.  So, there is actually a lot going on. There are also collections about the Partition by Waqas Khwaja and Moniza Alvi.  Alvi and Dharker, the Lahore-born expatriate poets, are now major figures in mainstream British poetry; Dharker is the only poet of South Asian origin to have won the prestigious Queen바카라�s Medal for poetry in Britain. 바카라�I think the limited public response to Pakistani English poetry could be rectified if more publishers were willing to publish and promote Pakistani English poetry. They don바카라�t because there are not enough readers. So, it바카라�s a vicious circle,바카라� says Muneeza.

Pakistani English literature is considered to be a subdivision of Postcolonial literature. Like all other regional literature around the world, its primary goal was to represent local culture and indigenous stories. But things are not quite simple as globalisation has completely altered the relationship between the people of different nations and cultures. 바카라�I was highly sceptical about this idea of 바카라�pure local representation바카라� and my argument is that contemporary Pakistani English literature has crossed the national boundaries and barriers of identity and it doesn바카라�t or can바카라�t really represent purely indigenous aesthetics. There is a difference between literature and propaganda and I am not sure what the term 바카라�indigenous aesthetics바카라� implies or who defines such a category,바카라� says Muneeza.
 

The issue of indigenous aesthetics, says Muneeza, takes the critical narrative back to the narrative around 바카라�a Pakistani idiom,바카라� which was very popular during the 1960s. 바카라�At that point of time, the discussions on the 바카라�idiom바카라� encouraged Pakistani English poets to express the experience of their homeland, instead of trying to emulate nineteenth-century British writers. But the problem was that this discourse on idiom excluded Pakistani writers who wrote of experiences other than 바카라�ethnic바카라� and so we ended up marginalizing Zulfikar Ghose, not to mention Pakistan-based writers whose work had a broader dimension,바카라� says Muneeza.

In later years, of course, even Rafat, a leading figure in the discourse on 바카라�idiom,바카라� agreed that 바카라�indigenous aesthetics바카라� did have its limitations. 바카라�Everything has its time and place. I don바카라�t think literature can be reduced to classifications such as 바카라�indigenous aesthetics바카라� or indeed those 바카라�crossing barriers of identity and nationality,바카라� which seems a rather uncertain phrase to me,바카라� says Muneeza, who is optimistic about Pakistani writing in English diversifying into different literary genres and reaching a wider public in Pakistan through translations into Urdu and other local languages. 

(Aurangzeb Wattoo is a poet, columnist, critic and editor of The Prelude. He can be reached at aurangzeb.eng@iub.edu.pk)