Our essential reads for the week
Twenty-five years later, post-9/11 cinema’s crisis of imagination has never been clearer
Ahmad Ghulam Ali Chagla gave Pakistan one of its most enduring cultural symbols, yet his name remains almost invisible to the people. A closer look at his music reveals why his contribution deserves far more than a footnote.
One woman’s neurotic descent for the aesthetic
Burial rites and grieving rituals are a crucial part of processing grief and loss. But what of family members who have relocated to other cities or countries and are unable to attend funerals? Or who are unable to frequently visit the graveyards, even if they are in the same city? In graveyards across Karachi, digital routes between the bereaved and caretakers are forging new ways to maintain a connection with the departed.
Pakistan’s changing relationship with male self-care need not be a bad thing. But the boundaries between self-improvement and self-surveillance are increasingly blurred.
Farmers that have built and rebuilt the valley’s trout supply after each subsequent flood can no longer survive the strain
With its almost fantastical sleuths, wily criminals and neverending plot twists, the pulpy Urdu and Hindi detective nove...
This year’s Women’s Prize winner fills an important gap in contemporary histories of Afghanistan, but leaves the reader...
The daily horrors that animate the interior lives of women find themselves externalised as the uncanny
The political imaginaries of Iran’s most lauded literary voices in the West
Dalrymple reframes ‘Partition’ as the proper noun in the South Asian imaginary into a verb
At the center of Mina Malik’s 𝘙𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦 𝘗𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘵 is a woman who, cleansed by grief and anger, can finally see clearly
Leftist intellectuals and the creator of Ainak Wala Jin have more in common than we may assume
When enshittification comes for your favourite bookstore
By Saba Imtiaz
By Umair Javed
By Maryam Jillani
By Haroon Sethi
By Manahil Tahira
By Nudrat Kamal
Stories, Cultures, and Landscapes
Reflecting on the Zeitgeist
To understand Atif Aslam’s comeback album, you must first understand his journey from ‘Kinara’ to ‘Kinaare’
Sep 10, 2026
A reflection on filmmaker Umar Riaz’s ‘The Colour of My Heart’, produced by Asna Pictures.
Sep 04, 2026
To understand Atif Aslam’s comeback album, you must first understand his journey from ‘Kinara’ to ‘Kinaare’
Sep 10, 2026
A reflection on filmmaker Umar Riaz’s ‘The Colour of My Heart’, produced by Asna Pictures.
Sep 04, 2026
The city as the the main character in one writer’s quest for discovering his own voice
One woman’s neurotic descent for the aesthetic
What is Pakistan once the lights are off?
Some tasks are written for the sons of the house, such as getting dahi from the corner store, or killing the odd rat found scurrying around the house. What happens when the son in question tries to outsource the hit job?
SPORTS
Shoaib Akhtar, an era-defining bowler whose run-ups became the stuff of cricketing legend for how they commanded the emo...
SPORTS
Luka Modrić redefined the art of football in a way few players have.
When an algorithm selects a target, who carries the responsibility for the death that follows? Constitutional lawyer Maryam Ali Abbasi surveys the current state of AI-powered systems in global warfare and the development of legal frameworks.
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.
