What Is Pakistan Reading?

The following titles are in the display window at London Books, a store in The Point, Karachi’s trendiest shopping mall:

“War of the Ring” by J.R.R. Tolkien
“The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens
“Buddha” by Karen Armstrong
“The Summons” by John Grisham
“Dreamcatcher” by Stephen King
“Mao” by Jonathan Spence
“Jack” by Jack Welch
“The Infinite Plan” by Isabel Allende
“Self Matters” by Phillip C. McGraw
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling (Urdu version)

I purchased “A Wet Afternoon” by Saadat Hasan Manto, one of the greatest Urdu writers. It’s an English translation of his best short stories.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.