Granta: Pakistan

Pakistan is back in the news. Granta 112 offers a unique perspective on this complex country with reportage, fiction, poetry and art by some of the region’s brightest talents. In his Orwell Prize-shortlisted essay ‘Arithmetic on the Frontier’, Declan Walsh provides an intimate portrait of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, where Abbottabad is located:

Getting to the frontier is deceptively easy. The old route curled through Attock, where a 400-year-old Moghul fort towers over the swirling confluence of the Kabul and Indus rivers. These days the visitor sweeps in on a slick, six-lane motorway from Islamabad, two hours to the east. The provincial capital, Peshawar – thought to derive from the Sanskrit for ‘city of men’ – squats at the foot of the Khyber Pass, thrumming with nervous energy. Parts retain the romantic exoticism of Kipling’s verse. Blind beggars roam the spice bazaars of the old city; veiled women dart between glittering jewellery shops; peacocks strut on the preened lawns of the governor’s colonial-era mansion. Everywhere else, though, there are garish splashes of modernity – chromed plazas selling mobile phones; tacky American fast-food joints; giant billboards advertising remedies for male baldness; and ‘slimming academies’ for women. Cheap Chinese rickshaws swarm through the raucous traffic. (Subscribers to the magazine can read the whole article here.)

Click here to buy Granta 112: Pakistan, featuring Lorraine Adams, Nadeem Aslam, Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Sarfraz Monzoor, Daniyal Mueenuddin, Basharat Peer, Jane Perlez and Kamila Shamsie.