I just wanted to share the news that Dr. Cara Cilano’s forthcoming book is now available to preorder through Amazon. Dr. Cilano is a specialist on the narratives of 1971 war and this book is a testament to her dedication to this important but neglected part of Pakistani history. Dr. Cilano is also editing Pakistaniaat’s December Special Issue on the same subject. Below are some more details about the book: Description In 1971, a war which took place in Pakistan resulted in the establishment of two separate countries; East Pakistan became Bangladesh, leaving the remaining four western provinces to comprise a truncated Pakistan. This book examines how literature by those who remained Pakistanis acts as a cultural response to the threat the war posed to a nationalist identity. It provides an analysis of the writing of Pakistani authors in their attempt to deal with the radical shock of the war and shows how fiction about the war helps readers imagine what the paring down of the country means for any abiding articulation of a Pakistani group identification. The author discusses fictions in English in Urdu in the context of the historical debate about Pakistani nationalism, including how such nationalism informs literary culture, and in the contemporary interest in official apologies for the past. She argues that these fictions endow Musharraf’s statement of regret, made to Bangladeshis in 2002, with sincerity in that they prompt a collective reflection on how the iniquities, prejudices, and violence involved in the war develop from the very terms used to define Pakistani nationalism. The literary analyses identify four issues—the domestic sphere and the family; the territorial limits of citizenship; multiculturalism, class, and nationalist history; and diasporic imaginings of the nation—that resonate across the fictions in both languages in an attempt to trace how these works grapple with changing notions of what it means to be Pakistani after the civil war. Publication Details
Order Link: Amazon. |
ISSN 1948-6529; EISSN 1946-5343 | 