Our essential reads for the week
Under colonial influence, the visual grammar of our past—soft silhouettes, draped fabrics, floral motifs, jewelry worn by men with ease—was stripped away. What remains is a masculine rigidity suspicious of any sartorial playfulness
Pakistan's myopic focus on raising tax-to-GDP ratios rests on flawed assumptions and distracts from real fiscal reforms.
At his mid-career retrospective at COMO museum, the artist’s work speaks to his personal and ancestral pain and imagines a way out of it
While most citizens of Karachi do not have access to cultural spaces, the well-heeled enjoy the vast expanses of country clubs, spaces reminiscent of the colonial era that function as a soft mechanism of exclusions, making it clear who is deemed to deserve leisure and comfort in the city.
Characterized by deregulation in markets, and trade and financial liberalization, the set of prescriptions commonly dubbed as ‘neoliberalism’ were macroeconomic orthodoxy for nearly four decades. Now it seems to be dying, transforming our world in the process.
Despite small pockets and different formats of revival, spaces for communities to gather and spend unstructured time together have been shrinking in Pakistani cities
By Saba Imtiaz
By Umair Javed
By Maryam Jillani
Stories, Cultures, and Landscapes
Reflecting on the Zeitgeist
While most citizens of Karachi do not have access to cultural spaces, the well-heeled enjoy the vast expanses of country clubs, spaces reminiscent of the colonial era that function as a soft mechanism of exclusions, making it clear who is deemed to deserve leisure and comfort in the city.
May 31, 2025
From the ban on X (formerly known as Twitter) to the arrests of activists over speech, PECA has allowed the state to exercise the most arbitrary set of controls over Pakistani citizens’ use of the vast playground of the internet
Apr 29, 2025
While most citizens of Karachi do not have access to cultural spaces, the well-heeled enjoy the vast expanses of country clubs, spaces reminiscent of the colonial era that function as a soft mechanism of exclusions, making it clear who is deemed to deserve leisure and comfort in the city.
May 31, 2025
From the ban on X (formerly known as Twitter) to the arrests of activists over speech, PECA has allowed the state to exercise the most arbitrary set of controls over Pakistani citizens’ use of the vast playground of the internet
Apr 29, 2025
The UK-based Pakistani author’s most recent novel A Woman on a Suitcase revisits marriage and the end of it
In our increasingly media-saturated landscape, in thrall of an attention economy that strategizes attracting eyeballs an...
𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘓𝘢𝘮𝘱, the first ever book translated from Kannada shortlisted by the International Booker Prize, is a collection o...
Nobel Prize Winner Han Kang’s oeuvre may be be celebrated due to her status as a novelist “for the times”, but what sepa...
A book that purports to fact-check the oeuvre and credibility of two Indian writers may very well be in need of fact-che...
Sarwari lays it all bare in this clear-eyed memoir about the trials of her marriage, within which the lines between moth...
Abu Toha, who has emerged as a significant voice during the genocide of his people, has written a harrowing testament to...
Orbital, the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, invites us to explore our fragility as human beings and bear witness to th...
SPORTS
Somewhere between buffet-style star-studded extravaganzas to budget productions and to the relentless self-promotion of...
SPORTS
Is there an almost mathematical formula to creating an effective cricket anthem, or is cracking the code to the populari...
A reflection on the surreal experience of living in a largely indifferent Europe run by complicit governments as a genocide unfolds elsewhere
An explainer on Pakistan’s electricity shortfall
Against the backdrop of Israel’s blockade and wars, Gaza’s birdwatching twins look skywards for inspiration
