Evil in The Worlds of Iranian Booker Honourees
Jul 09, 2026
The political imaginaries of Iran’s most lauded literary voices in the West
Rana Saadullah Khan
Rana Saadullah Khan is a writer from Lahore and Islamabad. His work has been published in Lakeer, Jamhoor, The Aleph Review, as well as through UNESCO Pakistan and by the history education platform, Hashiya.
A Writer and Their World: Audrey Truschke
Apr 24, 2026
Audrey Truschke, is an award-winning historian of South Asia and author of four books, with a focus on medieval South Asian communal relations, especially those during the Mughal Empire. Her book Aurangzeb was hotly contested by Hindu fundamentalist organisations and even led to a libel suit against her. She recently sat down with Rana Saadullah Khan, following the publication of her latest book India: 5000 Years of History on the Subcontinent, for a conversation on history, censorship, translations and more.
A Writer and Their World: Dur e Aziz Amna
Mar 16, 2026
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.
Faiz Festival 2026 and the Promise of Urdu
Feb 18, 2026
The 10th Faiz Festival took place in Lahore from 13–15 February, featuring an array of writers, poets, artists and intellectuals. Rana Saadullah Khan found that the festival was a triumphant celebration of Urdu literature.
Keeru and Instructional Fictions
Jan 13, 2026
𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶 by Fauzia Rafique, translated from the Punjabi by Haider Shahbaz (2025), follows Muhammad Hussain Khan ‘𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶’ who has escaped Pakistan and lives in Vancouver, running a small business. For Rana Saadullah Khan the novel’s utopic imagination (depictions of the Punjab, of discrimination, of diasporic yearnings or lack thereof) draws such a neat dividing line between the lands in which horrors can occur and where dreams come to fruition that it makes one hesitant to celebrate 𝘒𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘶 and its acts of hope.
Perveen Shakir and Zeenat Hisam’s North Americans
Dec 18, 2025
Zeenat Hisam’s Tamannaon Ke Deyaar Se is an anthology of translated poems from North American women poets. Rana Saadullah Khan wonders why the translations have not found a wider audience and muses on Perveen Shakir’s enduring influence on Urdu literary creatives.
A Raja in Beirut
Nov 26, 2025
Rabih Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja The Gullible (and His Mother) recently became the first Arab-American work to receive a National Book Award in Fiction. The decades-spanning novel tells the story of a singular life and its absurdities. Rana Saadullah Khan dives into Alameddine’s tragicomic world.
A Writer and Their World: Zubair Ahmad
Nov 24, 2025
Rana Saadullah Khan sat down with Zubair Ahmad — Punjabi language writer and poet, and two-time Dhahan Prize winner — at Trinjan (a bookstore run by the author to promote the Punjabi language), to talk about his journey as a writer, his interest in the Punjabi language, realism, dreams and more.
Navigating Arundhati Roy’s Retractions
Oct 27, 2025
Arundhati Roy’s latest offering, Mother Mary Comes To Me, is an unflinching look at a difficult childhood and a fraught mother-daughter relationship, and its effects on a life lived in service of truth and justice. But, the author wonders if this memoir is a “safe” version of a trailblazing, resistant life.
That Which Looms in Hiromi Kawakami’s World
Jul 18, 2025
Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird (translated by Asa Yoneda, and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025) captured the public imagination with its post-apocalyptic narrative of a future depicting humanity’s precarious survival. But is this yet another in a long line of hyped spec-fic works translated from the Japanese, or does it offer greater insight into the genre?
The Sins of James
Jun 14, 2025
Satire aims to provoke, but does Percival Everett’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel go far enough?
Banu Mushtaq’s Muslim Women
May 12, 2025
𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘓𝘢𝘮𝘱, the first ever book translated from Kannada shortlisted by the International Booker Prize, is a collection of short stories not bothered with defining and diagnosing the problems of the nation at large, but with the minutiae, with domestic squabbles, with very peculiar anxieties