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3 great books from Pakistan, an extraordinary country that has never ceased to amaze
Small but necessary premise
This is not a ranking but a suggestion for those approaching these countries and areas of the world for the first time and is also linked to the personal taste of the author. Putting only 3 works (thus risking to leave out entire countries) was a very specific choice due to something that is often forgotten: books are not free. Our intent is to provide beginners and experts with 3 truly “indispensable” titles, which can thus allow them to enjoy a good text and / or discover something new, allowing them to only make “good” shopping.
A final clarification: to date I have read many books but only two authors of this extraordinary country, but we are already gearing up to expand our knowledge of this magnificent literature. Do you have different “must-sees”? We are very curious to know them, in the future we will start direct 30 minutes / 1 hour starting from these lists; stay connected to receive news. We leave you to the list, good reads.
“Javid Nama” by Allama Muhammad Iqbal
“This is the work of one of the greatest poets of the modern East, Muhammad Iqbâl, to be numbered among the major spirits of Asia, in which the ferment of political movements is accompanied, preparing them and infusing them with impetus and vigor of ideas , a tormented spiritual awakening. In the Celestial Poem the mysticism of Jalâl-ud-dìn Rûmì has been transformed, for the urgency of the times, into active participation in human pains and disappointments; the meeting of East and West, more generically than faith and intellect, he had aroused new anxieties in Iqbâl’s soul, which reflected in his work interpreted the hopes and expectations of his people and of our age and re-evaluated that action that Asia had too often sacrificed at the thought.”
One of the most extraordinary books I’ve read in my entire life, the only one I’ve reread just finished. The text by Allama Muhammad Iqbal will lead us to make a new Miraj in which we will meet incredible characters including:
“Discontent and Its Civilisations” by Mohsin Hamid
“If globalization has something to promise us, something that can push us to welcome the resulting chaos with open arms, then what it has to promise us is this: we will be freer to invent ourselves.” With this declaration of intent, this collection of articles and short essays by one of the most provocative and stimulating storytellers of our time opens. But in the globalized world do we really have the freedom to invent ourselves? Everything seems to indicate the opposite, because any pretext is good for imprisoning us in those “pervasive, dangerous and powerful illusions” which bear the name of civilization. Hamid calls it the yoke of misdirection: “We are told to forget the sources of our discomfort because something more important is at stake: the fate of our civilization.” And so it ends up seeming inevitable that trying in vain to reject immigration and seal borders is more important than remedying the economic disorder and growing social disparities. Moving between personal memories and political reflection, between literature and news, Hamid looks at the world around us with the eyes of a writer who grew up between Pakistan and the United States, who lived in London and recently returned to live in Lahore. . And reading it we discover that perhaps it is possible to free oneself from the yoke of misdirection, and “get together to invent a post-civilization world, and therefore infinitely more civilized”.
A book necessary more than ever in the age we are living in. Through his life, Hamid will lead us to definitively understand what globalization is, allowing us to solve the problems derived from it. As repeated over and over again by Hamid, in fact, it is necessary to distance ourselves from the preconceived ideas we have of the world, thus managing to build ourselves for who we are and who we really want to be. A text that, years later, is still able to make me feel emotions, an essential reading for our times.
“The reluctant fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid
Each empire has its own Janissaries, and Changez is a Janissary from the American Empire. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful encounter . . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by an elite valuation firm. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his budding romance with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his relationship with Erica shifting. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
Hamid is able to completely move my soul and this book is perhaps the one that, over time, has managed to earn a bigger place in my life. Even appeared in my high school thesis, this book turns out to be one of the highest texts regarding literature and, specifically, that “
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