Impressionistic fiction

Sara Suleri and Aaamer Hussein, whose books are under review here, are both internationally acclaimed as writers and scholars of English

Sara Suleri (b.1953) and Aaamer Hussein (b.1955), both of Pakistani origin, are internationally acclaimed as writers and scholars of English. The former is a professor emeritus of English at Yale University, USA while the latter is associated with the academia of the Universities of Southampton and London., UK.

Sara Suleri comes of a distinguished paternity headed by a well known journalist of yore Z.A. Suleri. Her Welsh mother taught English at the Punjab University in the mid-1960s. Two of her novels Meatless Days and Boys Will Be Boys appeared in print in 1989 and 2003 respectively.

This review is meant to cover Meatless Days and Boys Will Be Boys by Sara Suleri and The Swan’s Wife by Aamer Hussein.

Meatless Days

Suleri thought that she was trying to create “a new kind of historical writing, whereby I give no introductions whatsoever. I use the names, the places, but I won’t stop to describe them”. So the work (Meatless Days) presents Pakistan as it appeared to her. It contains personal memoir, the history of the development of Pakistan, and the position of the feminine gender within Pakistani culture. Paradoxically, a trace of the postcolonial rhetoric and the non-chronological pattern of the narrative lend it a unique vision that is far from postcolonial in nature.

A tangible touch of personal biography tends to enhance the thematic authenticity of the novel which Suleri would insist on terming as an ‘alternative history’ of Pakistan. She weaves her own personal history into that of Pakistan for the two entities are according to her ‘inextricably connected to one another’.

Suleri has an eye and an ear for the comic; her ability to spot the pretentious and comic serves her well in describing the characters in the story. The book like its precursor is rich in autobiographical details.

The book comprises nine chapters. For Suleri personal events in it are tied to historical ones and vice versa. The narrative focuses on family members, Dadi, Father, Mother and siblings besides a close friend fictionalized as Mustakori. It is an adept coalescence of reminiscences and reactions of the narrator demonstrating her ties to her past and to Pakistani culture and to the landscape that coloured her childhood.

Some of these memories are inalienably linked to the history of Pakistan also. And this is remarkable about a story which seemingly originates from a variety of ‘food deceptions’! Thus meatless days, ironically in the indigenous context, are abundantly rich in food, stored on the previous days. The metaphor gains a deeper meaning when Suleri terms it as a large ‘funeral game’. The other themes treated in the book relate to gender and sibling relations, political strife, religion, expatriation, etc.

Meatless Days

By Sara Suleri

Publisher: Ilqa Publications (Readings),

12-K, Main Boulevard, Gulberg 2, Lahore

Pages: 186; Price: Rs. 395/-

Boys Will Be Boys – a daughter’s elegy

The book records reminiscences of a lifetime of bitter-sweet experiences. It is spread over some fourteen chapters – all but one beginning with a line or two of Urdu poetry, by Meer, Insha, Ghalib, Momin, Haali, Akbar Allahabadi, and Iqbal. It is a tribute to the author’s late father Z.A. Suleri whom she calls ‘Pip’ – a compression of ‘patriotic and preposterous’. He forcibly imposed on his children and demanded their utmost fealty and in case of default, banished them from his favour

As its sub-title indicates, the book is an elegy for its author’s father, and seeks to combine memoir, history, and biography. It offers the readers ‘a glimpse into a cross-continental life and a story of family dynamics recognizable to anyone shaped by the extraordinary will of a parent’. It is an ambivalent parent-child relationship, earlier highlighted in Meatless Days as well.

Suleri has an eye and an ear for the comic; her ability to spot the pretentious and comic serves her well in describing the characters in the story. The book like its precursor is rich in autobiographical details with Austin Goodyear, her white consort, as a new entrant in the pageant of her reminiscences.

It is a veritable elegy for ‘Pip’, Suleri’s father, who was a man of force and contradiction. The charismatic personality of the man with a ‘lion’s head’ and ‘memorable gaze’ permeates the book like his comments, conversations and caprices, his passion for newsprint, words and ideas, and above all his firm commitment to Pakistan and its founder.

Boys Will Be Boys – a daughter’s elegy.

By Sara Suleri

Publisher: Ilqa Publications (Readings),

12-K, Main Boulevard, Gulberg 2, Lahore

Pages: 121; Rs. 325/-

The Swan’s Wife

Aamer Hussain is now a reputed short story writer and critic. His early work appeared in journals and anthologies in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. He came into limelight as a fiction writer with the publication of his maiden collection of short stories titled Mirror to the Sun in 1993, followed by five other collections – This Other Salt, Turquoise, Cactus Town, Insomnia, and The Swan’s Wife, a novella Another Gulmohar Tree, and a novel The Cloud Messenger. He has also edited a volume of stories by Pakistani women titled Kahani (2005).

The Swan’s Wife comprises a mix of ten ‘short’ short stories, some original while others translated from Urdu. Character development is its author’s forte. Umair Omar’s character in four of the stories would support the observation.

The Swan’s Wife comprises a mix of ten ‘short’ short stories, some original while others translated from Urdu. Character development is its author’s forte. Umair Omar’s character in four of the stories would support the observation.

Hussein’s reliance on fables invests the opening story The Swan’s Life with much of its charm. The last story Ahmar and Anbara too reads like a fable about royal personages, jealous siblings, and haunted objects with an abrupt but unfinished ending. The tales clearly reflect ‘the even-handed and engrossing tone of the author’.

As an adroit craftsman, Hussein has designed these stories in an impressionistic fashion suited to the exigencies of the narration, his capacity to bemuse or bewilder the reader notwithstanding.

The Swan’s Wife

By Aamer Hussein

Publisher: Ilqa Publications (Readings),

12-K, Main Boulevard, Gulberg 2, Lahore

Pages: 126; Price: Rs395/-