Grieving for Pigeons, Revised Edition
Twelve Stories of Lahore
9781771994316
Distributed for Athabasca University Press
Grieving for Pigeons, Revised Edition
Twelve Stories of Lahore
An English translation of a collection of short stories that represents everyday life in the Punjab.
In this poignant and meditative collection of short stories, Zubair Ahmad captures the lives and experiences of the people of the Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan. In an intimate narrative style, Ahmad writes a world that hovers between memory and imagination, home and abroad. The narrator follows the pull of his subconscious, shifting between past and present, recalling different eras of Lahore’s neighborhoods and the communities. These stories evoke the complex realities of post-colonial Pakistani Punjab. The contradictions and betrayals of this region’s history reverberate through the stories, evident in the characters, their circumstances, and sometimes their erasure. Skillfully translated from Punjabi by Anne Murphy, this collection is an essential contribution to the wider recognition of the Punjabi language and its literature.
In this poignant and meditative collection of short stories, Zubair Ahmad captures the lives and experiences of the people of the Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan. In an intimate narrative style, Ahmad writes a world that hovers between memory and imagination, home and abroad. The narrator follows the pull of his subconscious, shifting between past and present, recalling different eras of Lahore’s neighborhoods and the communities. These stories evoke the complex realities of post-colonial Pakistani Punjab. The contradictions and betrayals of this region’s history reverberate through the stories, evident in the characters, their circumstances, and sometimes their erasure. Skillfully translated from Punjabi by Anne Murphy, this collection is an essential contribution to the wider recognition of the Punjabi language and its literature.
Table of Contents
Introduction / Anne Murphy
Waliullah Is Lost
Bajwa Has Nothing More to Say Now
Dead Man’s Float
Pigeons, Ledges, and Streets
The Beak of the Green Parrot, Submerged in the River
He Has Left, and Won’t Be Back
Sweater
Unstory
The Estranged City
The Silence of Saints
Half Maghar Moon
The Wall of Water
Be the first to know
Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!