Londoner: All Comments

DRIVING GRANTA 112 PAKISTAN

You drive through or fly over, and you presume you know the territories, can tell it all or show it. As if that fond and much fondled English-Arab lad the Lawrence of Arabia could have sat easy on the back of a camel in the London Zoo and written his reportage, poetic adventures and memoirs. Do we know Brixton? But Pakistan is not Brixton. 'Pakistan' remains unseen, unfelt, untold in these 300 pages. How to slip off the superfices of a self-indexed text rafting on exotic shores? Do look up GRANTA 112 PAKISTAN.

'Granta 112: Pakistan' is a disappointment. The fiction is passable, but the other sections are so weak it's an embarrassment to any reader used to Granta's general standard. What to talk of Kashmir? Where are all the major writers of Pakistan? Not here, in this issue, which must be called 'a lost opportunity'. What's the point of picking stuff from a Southall flea market and loading it on to a Khyber Pass painted truck called 'Pakistan'? For diagonal parking in the middle of Addison Avenue it should be given a ticket. Want to read the best Pakistani writers of our time, or the best writing relating to Pakistan? Not here today. Maybe Granta will do another (likely well thought out and worthwhile) issue on 'Pakistan' rather than engaging in such journalism in a hurry.