LOVE IN CHAKIWARA AND OTHER MISADVENTURES

LOVE IN CHAKIWARA AND OTHER MISADVENTURES MUHAMMAD KHALID AKHTAR

The greatest novel in the Urdu language' Faiz Ahmed Faiz A small Karachi neighbourhood, Chakiwara is humdrum and unspectacular to all appearances. But inside its shops and at the street corners, there is curious business afoot. Chronicling the drama that unfolds daily is Iqbal Hussain Changezi, bakery owner and collector of writers and geniuses. He has his eyes on out-of-work comedian Chakori, apprentice to a Chinese dentist, even as the town’s mostly unsuccessful healer of physical and spiritual maladies prepares to unleash his top-secret invention, the love meter. Muhammad Khalid Akhtar presents a world at once familiar and peculiar but always surprising, his unforgettable characters keeping alive the old ways in a quietly changing Karachi in post-independence Pakistan. Love in Chakiwara is a true testament to the wit, sagacity and quiet brilliance of one of the greatest storytellers of his time.

MUHAMMAD KHALID AKHTAR

Muhammad Khalid Akhtar was born in 1920 in Bahawalpur, to a family of scholars. An engineer by training, he began writing in his early twenties. Khalid Akhtar produced numerous stories, essays and travelogues, many of which were published in the Urdu magazine Sawera. Love in Chakiwara (Chakiwara Mein Visaal), one of his best-known works, was written in 1964, and won the Adamjee Literary Award. Khalid Akhtar died in Karachi in 2002. Bilal Tanweer is the author of the novel The Scatter Here Is Too Great, which won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He has translated works by Sa’adat Hasan Manto and novels by Ibn-e Safi. His writings have appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, The Caravan, Granta and Words Without Borders.