Our essential reads for the week
Niilofur Farrukh, former CEO and Managing Trustee of Karachi Biennale Trust, reflects on how the organisation has sustained itself for the last ten years, despite overwhelming obstacles, from hosting biennales in a city on the brink of infrastructural collapse to funding precarity.
From rishta aunties to matchmaking apps, Pakistan’s youth are caught between tradition and technology, rejecting old formulas yet discovering that swipes and algorithms don’t always deliver love either.
Rana Saadullah Khan sat down with Dur e Aziz Amna, author of 𝘈 𝘚𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘍𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳, during her recent trip to Lahore, for a conversation on craft, literary inspirations, writing philosophy and the worlds her protagonists inhabit.
Fatima Bhutto’s highly anticipated memoir, The Hour of The Wolf (Granta, 2026), is ostensibly a powerful memoir of grief, love and heartbreak. For Shanzay Asim, who read it in the company of her own cats, Yoko and Tintin, it also reads as validation for the devotion to her own pets. Moving from an unconditional love of (and from) a pet, Bhutto’s Jack Russell Terrier, Coco, to the toxic love of a narcissist, the memoir is a forensic examination of how we can survive the wreckage of human cruelty by clinging to the purity of animal devotion.
The security protocols of banks in Pakistan may or may not protect us from outside fraud, but certainly seem designed to protect us from ourselves
This Is Where the Serpent Lives strives for scope but reduces class and gender to the familiar
This Is Where the Serpent Lives strives for scope but reduces class and gender to the familiar
Fatima Bhutto’s highly anticipated memoir, The Hour of The Wolf (Granta, 2026), is ostensibly a powerful memoir of grief...
Anissa Helou is a London-based chef, teacher and author who specialises in cooking and writing recipes for Mediterranean...
When a major Pakistani political figure is hanged, OK Town erupts in protest. A few miles away, Sir Baghi is surprised b...
‘𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺: 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘈𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘭𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩’ by Uzair Younus wonders if instead of a collapse, we are on t...
In Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys (2025), Argentine journalist and novelist Mariana Enriquez bl...
𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶 by Fauzia Rafique, translated from the Punjabi by Haider Shahbaz (2025), follows Muhammad Hussain Khan ‘𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶’ who...
Maha Khan Phillips takes us on a whirlwind, absorbing adventure in her fourth novel, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘶𝘮 𝘋𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦.
By Saba Imtiaz
By Umair Javed
By Maryam Jillani
By Haroon Sethi
Stories, Cultures, and Landscapes
Reflecting on the Zeitgeist
Family and community is broken. Can it be fixed?
Mar 06, 2026
From rishta aunties to matchmaking apps, Pakistan’s youth are caught between tradition and technology, rejecting old formulas yet discovering that swipes and algorithms don’t always deliver love either.
Mar 25, 2026
Family and community is broken. Can it be fixed?
Mar 06, 2026
From rishta aunties to matchmaking apps, Pakistan’s youth are caught between tradition and technology, rejecting old formulas yet discovering that swipes and algorithms don’t always deliver love either.
Mar 25, 2026
SPORTS
Pakistani cricket has become synonymous with unpredictability. Despite occasional flashes of brilliance, watching the te...
SPORTS
After a four-year hiatus, Pakistan has finally progressed beyond the group stage at an ICC tournament. This qualificatio...
At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, the European Union and its leading member states were no longer willing to quietly acquiesce to Washington’s demands under President Donald Trump.
Trump’s interest in Greenland is not new. During his first term, his suggestion that the United States should ‘buy’ Greenland was widely mocked, dismissed as a diplomatic oddity. Ahmad Jamal Wattoo looks at the strategic logic beneath the spectacle.
Debt-for-climate swaps are no longer boutique transactions, but are being pitched as a central tool to help countries break free from the vicious cycle of debt distress and climate vulnerability. Can the G77+China succeed in making them more than symbolic, clever deals on the margins?
