Join us for an evening of readings and recollections on 1971
Pakistan, just 24 years old, was plunged into a major war in 1971. Do we really know what led to its dismemberment and what the “other half” was going through? If textbooks of history in the schools are silent or gloss over the events, can we turn to Pakistan’s writers and poets to discover the truth? While literature focusing on that period abounds from Bangladesh, only a handful of our fiction writers addressed these issues in their works, depicting their versions of the “truth”. But many questions still remain: What do their depictions add up to? How different is their view from what the writers in Bangladesh chose to write about? What can we learn from these stories?
To mark the first birthday of The Second Floor (T2F), a special session of readings and discussion will focus on this critical juncture in the country’s history, which also marks an important and unrecognized crisis in Pakistan’s literature. Intizar Hussain, one of Pakistan’s leading fiction writers and Asad Muhammed Khan, the innovative grandmaster of fiction, will share their experiences and writings about living through and remembering 1971.
Joining them will be Niaz Zaman, Asif Farrukhi, and Saima Hussain. Asif and Niaz have recently published Fault Lines, an anthology in which the two sides – Bangladesh and Pakistan – are brought together, along with writers from India, the USA and the UK, through stories related to the events of 1971. Niaz Zaman is a writer and editor based in Dhaka and Asif Farrukhi writes Karachi and lives in fiction. Saima Hussain is the editor of DAWN’s Books & Authors.
We are grateful to Herbion for making this event possible. Thank You!
Date: Sunday 11th May, 2008
