Narrating Pakistan is an attempt to explore the idea of Pakistan through contemporary stories-the term, the country, the nation, the identity, the idea, the boundary, the border, the story, the history, the arch, or the absence thereof. What are some of our stories? What demands to be written? And what remains unsaid?

The stories, fictional and nonfictional, show multiple perspectives on what constitutes a Pakistani writer or a Pakistani narrative. The characters range from truck drivers in interior Sindh to Muslim boys growing up in the suburban United States, from young men arriving in Sydney and Frankfurt battling cultural shock to women in urban Islamabad fighting patriarchy. Interweaved among the surrealistic imaginations of diasporic writers are reflections on memory, language, disease, death, and belonging. All the writers gathered here share a contemporary cosmopolitan sensibility. The last author in the anthology is a digital entity and problematizes the idea of a storyteller with a distinct geographical region and acknowledges the posthuman future awaiting all of us.

A momentous coming together of brilliant young writers. The writers in this anthology are narrating a different story of Pakistan-a richer, truer, more nuanced Pakistan than can be found in any newspaper or column. A book to help us feel more deeply, and see farther. Bilal Tanweer

About the Author

SAEED UR REHMAN has a PhD in postcolonial literary studies from the Australian National University and has held a postdoctoral fellowship at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. He is the founding editor of KRNT (krnt.io). His work has appeared in Mississippi Review Online, Cultural Dynamics, Kunapipi, The Historian, The Foreigner, Herald, and the Journal of Research in Humanities. His sources of inspiration are André Gide, Georges Bataille, and Jean Genet, among others.

KHADEEJA FAROOQUI is the co-editor of Narrating Pakistan. She earned her BA in Literature and Creative Writing from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Rutgers University. Her work, which largely focuses on immigrant narratives and subcultures, has appeared in Airport Road, Electra Street, Surrounded, Charcoal and Gravel, The Gazelle, The News, and Dawn, among others. Currently, she is pursuing her doctorate at Princeton University.