Sarajevo Saturdays
Maniza Naqvi

Sarajevo Saturdays is a captivating collection of vignettes of everyday life in post-war Sarajevo. The book makes the reader experience life in the city, with its great and small joys, from an outsider’s perspective. It does not claim to speak for its citizens, but shares an intimate glimpse into their lives. The stories reflect the lives of those who face a deep crisis, the kind that those who are emerging from war need to confront. This makes the work valuable as a literary narration.

Stay With Me
Maniza Naqvi

A haunting addition to contemporary fiction, this compelling work explores memory, reconstructed and recalled, as a burden of choices. Stay With Me is a disturbing story about the trauma of torture that agitates the reader into empathizing with the victim who moves in and out of consciousness. While disjointed memories of betrayal, torment, love and suffering can deceive and destroy, yet they can also save and anesthetize.

The Blue Room
Nafisa Rizvi

Growing up in a large, extended family cloistered in a haveli, Zaibunnissa is an unusual, insightful little girl who acquires the most extraordinary set of friends by chance. Events take a nasty turn when she decides to expose the evil machinations of a fictitious moulvi, and is hurriedly married off to an older man she has never seen.

Concentric Circles
Fauzia Azami Zubair

Dedicated to the author’s parents, and composed—in both rhyme and free verse—over a span of thirty-five years, the poems in this slim volume are a welcome addition to poetry in English from Pakistan. Finely and delicately crafted, the poems are accompanied with line drawings and reveal an engaging literary asset.