Pakistani Fiction In English

Since, the incident of 9/11, the identity of the Muslims across the globe have gone through serious misrepresentations by the western media. This paper provides the insights that how the Muslims have been treated as suspected ones by the westerns. The loyalties of the Muslims were suspected and doubted in America in response to the incident of 9/11. Muslims were victimized on account of their negatively perceived identity. In-Home Boy the Muslim immigrants consistently attempt to re-write and negotiate their identity in response to their misrepresentations of identity. For thematic analysis, theoretical insights have been taken from Almond’s The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard. The textual analysis of the novel reveals that the Muslims in the western world were already suspected due to the orientalist mind-set of the American society but the incident of 9/11 aggravated this situation in practical social settings. Naqvi speaks for th...

The culture of Pakistan which is deeply entrenched in patriarchy has given rise to constructs of ideal feminity as devotion, endurance, loyalty and self-sacrifice. Literature is considered to be one of the most important means of perpetuating such images which seek to marginalize women and ensure male domination. The study of Pakistani fiction provides a fertile ground for a feminist critic seeking to unearth the political dimensions of characterization and to undermine patriarchal marginalization of women. An investigation of the ideological dynamics of portrayal of women in literature was the primary concern of the " Images of women " school of criticism. This trend particularly dominated feminist criticism in the 1970s and still remains a dominant focus of Women Studies in literature. In this research " Images of women " critical approach was used to analyse and evaluate how Kamila Shamsie, an emerging Pakistani female writer has depicted female characters in the novels Salt and Saffron and Broken Verses. The critical analysis of Shamsie's selected fiction in the light of Images of women criticism revealed the novelist's keen observation and realistic presentation of Pakistan's predominantly patriarchal culture, where women are still in the process of transition to break free from the moulds of ideal feminity. Shamsie champions women's autonomy by portraying socially rebellious, strong-willed and courageous women as her central characters and deconstructs the ancient stereotypes of Pakistani women.

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/90355221/changing-images-pakistani-women-kamila-shamsies-salt-saffron-broken-verses

Daniyal mueenudeen's first collection of short stories straddles between east and west rural and urban upper and lower class. This very first collection of short fiction is worth reading because it depicts the people, culture and the part of the world often not experienced by Americans through contemporary literature. Daniyal Mueenudeen was the son of a Pakistani father and was born to an American mother. Mueenudeen lived his early childhood in Pakistan. During his childhood he was surrounded by the rural lower class but was brought up in a land-owning upper class family. He portrays the characters very efficiently both from upper and lower class in his stories because he has seen them all closely. Mueenudeen attended high school in U.S. and he then continued his education from Darthmouth college, yale law school and the university of Arizona's MFA program in creative writing. Mueenudeens collection of fiction conveys both the cultural overlap and the chasm between the contemporary Pakistani and American societies. In In other rooms other wonders Daniyal Mueenudeen pens down eight interconnected stories in which he describe the lives of the people which are the employees, servant, and acquaintances of aging landlord K.K Harouni. These stories are set in the rich soil of Punjab. Pakistan, and he pins the main focus on the state of feudalism and its importance and influence in modern life. In these short stories we see the tender portrayal of relationships by Mueenudeen and how they struggle within themselves. This portrayal of Mueenudeen makes his short stories very appealing and unforgettable. These stories weave a cultural web around the reader because the narrations moves from different regions and social classes, from feudal land-based system to the new industrialism of the 1970s and 1980s. In order to understand sexual agency in women one needs to be clear about personal and sexual agency itself. The personal agency refers to an individual's ability to act in a way to accomplish his/her goals. When we have a certain agency in our life, it is to have the capacity to behave or act in a way that will give us the result which we desire. The sexual agency in women is about the complex group of rights, knowledge, skills, personal authority and abilities women posses in order to get what they want t accomplish. Women in Mueenudeens stories use sex to prey on men. It is their strongest weapon. The women of the lower and upper class use feminine influence to maneuver their husbands into their circles of power and authority. Marriage and sex are the prime movers of the relationships between men and women in this book, but Mueenuddin is successful at describing manipulation and ingenuity. His female characters are as human and vivid as the male.

Postcolonial Interventions, Vol. V, Issue 2
The Ethical Re(turn) in Postcolonial Fiction: Narrating the Precariat in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Mohammad Hanif’s Red Birds
Paul Veyret
Abstract
This paper focuses on the literary representation of the a category precar- iat, pigrants and refugees in Middle Eastern and Muslim countries and the ethical response they elicit. Migrants and refugees, who are assigned a place and a status on the margins of states or who are forcibly displaced by war, famine or natural disasters, are at the heart of two novels by Pakistani writ- ers Mohsin Hamid and Mohammed Hanif, Exit West (2017) and Red Birds (2018). Both novels propose singular responses to the refugee and migrant crisis by combining political commentary and engagement with the norms of realistic representation. Exit West and Red Birds represent attempts to apprehend the migrant crisis and the consequences of the war on terror on the civilian population through the prism of highly aesthetic fictional forms, and not by relying on actual legal definitions and population data. In fact, while Exit West and Red Birds are politically and ethically commit- ted novels about the socio-economic category of the precariat, narrating precariousness draws attention both on the representation of the precariat as a category, and also on the self-reflexive nature of language. As we shall see, the figure of the migrant is the founding metaphor of the novel, and Thomas Nail’s theories provide a useful tool of interpretation for Exit West, while Butler’s reflections on grievability and precariousness will find connections with Red Birds.
Keywords: Precariat, refugee, Pakistani fiction, grievability, kinopolitics.