In the New Century

In The New Century: An Anthology of Pakistani English Literature provides an important addition to Shamsie’s literary history Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of a Pakistani Literature in English (2004) as it includes texts linked to many of works discussed in Hybrid Tapestries, but focuses on writings published between 1997 and 2017.  As the century turned, Pakistani English continued to grow and develop, as the new star in Anglophone literature. This book is also an important follow-up to Shamsie’s first anthology, A Dragonfly in the Sun: An Anthology of Pakistani Writing in English which was published in 1997 to mark Pakistan’s Golden Jubilee, covered the first fifty years of Pakistan.

  In the New Century brings together, for the first time, the post-1997 texts by 85 writers of Pakistani origin including novels, short fiction, and life writing such as memoir essays by leading screenwriters and dramatists. The book includes the work of talented new, award-winning authors who emerged in the last two decades, alongside an earlier generation that  published major new work in the new century.

  The fiction of Tariq Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Uzma Aslam Khan, Zulfikar Ghose, Mohsin Hamid, Aamer Hussein, Abdullah Hussein, Mohammed Hanif, Hanif Kureishi, Daniyal Mueenuddin, H.M. Naqvi, Kamila Shamsie and Bapsi Sidhwa, the memoirs of Rukhsana Ahmad, and Ayub Khan Din, Sara Suleri Goodyear, the poetry of Taufiq Rafat, Moniza Alvi, Imtiaz Dharker, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Adrian A. Hussain, Mahmood Jamal, and Hima Raza, are all featured here, as are many others. The book also reveals new talents such as Kanza Javed, and Sophia Khan 

  In the New Century covers writers of Pakistani origin, living in Pakistan and the diaspora, to reveal both the links and differences between the two. In turn, it generates an important discourse on issues of identity, belonging, and homeland, issues that are pivotal and more relevant than ever in our interconnected global world.