{"id":309733,"date":"2026-04-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=309733"},"modified":"2026-04-16T16:00:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:00:02","slug":"pakistani-literature-that-refuses-to-pigeonhole-its-setting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/pakistani-literature-that-refuses-to-pigeonhole-its-setting\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistani Literature That Refuses to Pigeonhole Its Setting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Both Mahreen Sohail and Dur e Aziz Amna\u2019s work reflects a turning point in Pakistani literature: a move toward portraying lives as they are, unburdened by Pakistan as an ontological subject. Together, they represent a new guard of writers probing ambition, morality, and selfhood with nuance and precision. Sohail\u2019s debut novel, Small Scale Sinners<\/a><\/em>, is a kaleidoscopic story collection that interrogates what it means to be good across moments of intimacy, betrayal, and quiet rupture. Amna\u2019s latest novel, A Splintering<\/a>,<\/em> follows Tara, a woman navigating class, ambition, and desire as she moves from a rural village to the capital, pushing against the limits of the life she\u2019s been given.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Amna describes Tara as someone who can \u201cput on the face that she needs\u201d depending on who she is with. Sohail immediately recognizes that elasticity\u2014the same reaching, adapting instinct\u2014in the women who populate her stories. The two writers found a shared preoccupation: how women reshape themselves within relationships, adapting, recalibrating, and becoming different versions of themselves depending on who they are with. It felt like a key to both of their books, and, in some ways, to the conversation itself. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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When I pitched this interview, I imagined the three of us discussing their books through craft: voice, structure, the mechanics of building a character. But questions about narrative choices gave way to something more personal: how writing changes across time, across responsibility, across motherhood. This interview embodies the beauty of the dialogic format. I was honored to take on the role of guide, of prodder and gatherer, and to be a reason for these two writers to speak plainly about ambition, identity, and the selves that shift in the telling of stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Basmah Sakrani:<\/strong> If you think about the protagonists in your books\u2014Tara in Dure\u2019s, and any one of the women from Mahreen\u2019s stories\u2014what would they recognize in each other? What would feel familiar or unfamiliar?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dur e Aziz Amna:<\/strong> I can go first. In full disclosure, I read Mahreen\u2019s book a long time ago, so apologies if my memory is murky. But the one line that really stuck with me in \u201cThe Newlyweds\u201d is that what really makes a woman is the flexible way in which she is able to change the nature of who she is, depending on her relationships. I am paraphrasing, but it struck me so much that I remember highlighting it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel like that is also Tara, putting on the face she needs with every new person, being flexible in her idea of who she is, adapting based on who she is with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahreen Sohail:<\/strong> Dure, I was looking through your book again this morning. Something that felt very familiar to me was that Tara is always reaching. And I think the women in my stories are also reaching, either for love or for something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing I noticed was this disappointment with men, a slow, creeping disillusionment. I think that would feel familiar to many of the characters in my stories as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I fear that anytime you put in too much specificity, it detracts from the experience.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> Both of your books feature characters who commit transgressive acts. As you are writing your characters and they become more real to you, how do you both decide where that moral line lies? What are you thinking when you decide to push something further or ignore that line?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> I am not sure that when I was writing, I was thinking about moral lines. Maybe that comes later, in the editing process, and certainly now, as I\u2019m talking about the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, there is this idea of women just living their lives. When you are in the midst of living, you are not thinking, this is the line I am crossing<\/em>. And if the characters are well-rounded enough, it feels believable that they cross those lines, even in the context of a culture or a society like ours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am thinking about the story with the child soldiers, which is ambiguous. The sisters in it commit this act of kidnapping a girl. But I am hoping that the sisters\u2019 backstory and their grief over their mother are enough to show how those choices could come about. So, it is not necessarily about crossing the moral line as much as it is about what kind of situation would allow someone to cross it. And often that happens organically. The characters do take over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> It\u2019s funny you say that it\u2019s in talking about the book when you realize these things. With Tara, she\u2019s telling the story in retrospect, right? We start off with her saying, hey, I\u2019ve done something really bad, hear me out. <\/em>But it\u2019s the fact that she can see those moral lines more clearly because she\u2019s looking back at them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the moment, as Mahreen said, she\u2019s very much just living her life and making the choices that she needs to, to survive or thrive or get ahead or whatever we would like to call it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> I want to talk about being Pakistani writers. Pakistan appears differently in both your books, and I think both of you make this decision of kind of not naming the thing. Dure, you made up the village where Tara comes from, and Mahreen, you don\u2019t name Pakistan at all, but it\u2019s very evident in the description. How consciously do you think about that when you are creating something?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> Yeah, that\u2019s such a great question. I feel like I either have nothing to say about this or way too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With American Fever<\/a><\/em>, it was a book very cognizant of the fact that it\u2019s about this girl who\u2019s from Pakistan just by the nature of what she\u2019s doing, which is this exchange program. She feels like she\u2019s representing the place, and then she feels the oppressiveness of that expectation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With A Splintering<\/em>, I wanted to leave all of that behind, which is why a lot of things are not named. Even the city that ends up being named, Mazinagar, is fictional, mostly because there\u2019s so much vitriol in Tara\u2019s language about the place that I didn\u2019t want any small town in Pakistan to receive that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would have really liked to just completely strip away the proper nouns of places and markers. I also didn\u2019t want there to be any Urdu in the book and sometimes that puzzles people, but I think I\u2019m still trying to figure it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I fear that anytime you put in too much specificity, it detracts from the experience because the book can become this anthropological text versus just the story of the people who the story is about. But I\u2019m not convinced that\u2019s the exact solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> Yeah, I feel you, Dure. I found when I named places, they became associated with all of my specific feelings and attachments to a place. So not naming gave me this way of writing a range of experiences, a range of women who can do whatever they want, whereas otherwise, I feel like if I had named Pakistan, specifically Islamabad, I would have pigeonholed these stories into my version of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find that if I plan something, it takes the magic out of it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, it also feels like a lack. Would I be able to write a story that is very specifically Pakistani and named as such, and would it be good? So I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s me putting a Band-Aid on something or if it\u2019s a good narrative choice. This one is tough for me as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> I love that. I think naming things can also be a bit of a block for the writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> I loved how you both approached the answer to this question because in your responses, there\u2019s this element of protection of Pakistan. Dure, you\u2019re protecting the place from other people projecting things because of how you describe it. And Mahreen, you\u2019re also very protective of your own ability to write beyond the place and write bigger than just the place.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> Post 9\/11, there was a lot of literature, some of it very good, which dealt so consciously with Pakistan as this place that either had to be explained or defended. Pakistan with a very capital P. Perhaps I was working against that. Just a small-p pakistan where it\u2019s just a place, the way any place is a place where people live their ordinary lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> I want to transition to a question about form. Dure, you\u2019ve written two very distinct novels. And Mahreen, you\u2019ve got this collection, and you\u2019re playing around a lot with form inside it. Does the form come first? Do you find relief or comfort in the conventions of the form you\u2019re writing in?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> For some of the stories, the form does come first, and it helps contain the story. It defines the nature of what the story can be. But for a lot of them, it was the voice, and I don\u2019t always know what\u2019s going to come first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Sisters\u201d was written as a very traditional short story with a beginning, middle, and end, but it felt a little bit boring to me, so I went in and picked the lines I liked and was like, what if I just had this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> With both the novels, the voice emerged first and then the form followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I\u2019ve also learned to leave a lot of the certainties of writing by the wayside. You are always surprised and changed by your understanding of who you are as a writer. With the first book, there was an emphasis on language, culture, and cultural assimilation. That completely went by the wayside with the second. And with this third book, it doesn\u2019t feel as voice driven, it feels more like a book about ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS: So, with that, I\u2019m curious to understand something about how you both create. And I\u2019ll preface this by saying I hate the word process<\/em>. It just feels so erudite. But in terms of your writing style, are you outliners and planners, or are you feelers? Or is it a mix of both?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA: <\/strong>I\u2019m not a planner at all. I still try to make notes, but then those notes get lost and they\u2019re always, for some reason, loose leaf. So, I never know where they are. They\u2019re never in a diary assigned for that project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point you realize that\u2019s the kind of person you are, and you live with it. But at least with the first two books, I knew what would happen at the end. I always know how the book will end, but the way we\u2019re going to get there is very much a discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> Yeah, I am so not a planner as well. I also do not even know how the thing will end. I find that if I plan something, it takes the magic out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> That is very reassuring and validating, I have to admit. I\u2019ve tried, and I\u2019m now at the point [of] realizing I\u2019m not one of these people. I can\u2019t maintain this thing in a spreadsheet.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is something in your books or your stories, a small detail, that you\u2019re like, <\/strong>oh my God, I\u2019m so proud of this?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> I wish I had something I could turn to, something to hold onto in my moments of low self-esteem. This will be my homework. I will go back and find something to be proud of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> I will tell you, Dure, one of the things in A Splintering<\/em> that I thought was amazing was our relationship with Hamad, the husband. It was so nuanced, so well done, both his characterization and Tara\u2019s evolving feelings towards him. It\u2019s hard to believe you are not a planner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, it\u2019s the title. My editor came up with the title for the book, and I do quite like it. So maybe this is a moment for low self-esteem, I couldn\u2019t even come up with a title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> But you had the phrase in your story, so it was there. Who came up with your title, Dure?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> The book initially sold as Farewell, Province.<\/em> I came up with it and was still somewhat attached to it, but every single person hated it. It was a resounding failure, and the title we ended up with was one of 10 I\u2019d sent in an email. It\u2019s so funny, because I had to reverse engineer the part where it\u2019s mentioned in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> What are you reading right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> Just last night, I think I finished it in a day, was My Name is Lucy Barton<\/em><\/a> by Elizabeth Strout. I had preconceptions going in because the books are everywhere, but I loved it. I thought it was beautiful, calming, steadying. It was like reading someone\u2019s diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also just finished Mohammad Hanif\u2019s Rebel English Academy<\/a><\/em> and Daniyal Mueenuddin\u2019s This is Where the Serpent Lives<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> I’m thinking of Elena Ferrante’s interviews where she says that all books she grew up reading as a child were by men. Thankfully, I never had that problem. I\u2019ve actually placed a moratorium on myself after getting so saturated with thinking about women while writing A Splintering<\/em>. So now I\u2019ve vowed to read books by men. I\u2019ve been toying with the idea of writing a novel with a fully male protagonist. So part of it is subconscious research, an anthropological interest in what are men exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> How about you, Mahreen? What are you trying to do next?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motherhood was really the first time where I truly felt a full abdication of the person I used to be.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> I am not writing much. I have a two-year-old, and I just do not know where the time goes. I do have another book I finished while I was pregnant that I\u2019m hoping to send out. I have the ideas of a novel, but you never know where that goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> Are you both early morning writing people?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> Sometimes people who don’t have kids ask me this question. I’m like, do you understand what it’s like to have this little thing that can entirely disrupt your day?<\/em> This is what decides what my routine is for the day. Truly, my routine is at the mercy of the kids, but when things are working smoothly, I write in the mornings after breakfast and tap out by the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one thing I know is that it comes in spurts. There are times when I really, really want to write, and then I have to get all of that done, it becomes a distraction, a thing hanging over my head if I don\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> Before I had a baby, I could write at night. Now, after I get home from work and do bedtime, my brain is done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something strange also happened to me after having a kid: It\u2019s become harder to write because the stakes for my characters don\u2019t seem high enough. And in my life, they suddenly seem very high: I have this thing to keep alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> So what exactly does that mean? Did you mean your work as a writer feels like it has to now compete with your role as a mother? Or are you saying that what your characters are going through seems minuscule compared to your role as a mother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> It seems terrible to do things to my characters, to do terrible things to them in a world that my son is growing up in. You know what I mean? That’s what it feels like to me. And it’s a very strange feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> Last question. Mahreen, I was going through your other interviews, and in <\/strong>your interview in <\/strong>The Offing<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, <\/em><\/strong>you said this:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The women in these stories, and in some way many of us in real life, are wrestling with the question of how to be the best version of ourselves in our relationships\u2014as sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, aunts, mothers\u2014while still maintaining our independence. How do you keep some of yourself for yourself, and what is lost in the process?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So, with the discussion we\u2019ve had today about womanhood and motherhood and being writers and having relationships and jobs and dreams and ambitions, how do you both keep some of yourself? And what do you feel like you lose in the process?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAA:<\/strong> There\u2019s this line by David Brooks, about how growing up, becoming an adult, is just how well you give up your individual freedoms and take on responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motherhood was really the first time where I truly felt a full abdication of the person I used to be. It was irrevocable. More than marriage, more than anything else. Now, I can\u2019t even think of myself as anything else. The person that you are, there has to be a new person who comes in and takes that form of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will stop talking now because I think I\u2019m trying to say something, but it\u2019s not coming out the way I want it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BS:<\/strong> It\u2019s making sense to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MS:<\/strong> You are both further along the journey than I am. I think I have struggled to come to terms with the fact that I am fully this new person because of the small being that is co-opting me completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am always finding ways to see, how can I get this part of my mental space back?<\/em> It was useful to hear you say you have to just fully embrace who you are now, because I have been seeing it almost as a failing that I haven\u2019t been able to get that version of my brain back. It is good to hear that you can\u2019t go back to who you used to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both Mahreen Sohail and Dur e Aziz Amna\u2019s work reflects a turning point in Pakistani literature: a move toward portraying lives as they are, unburdened by Pakistan as an ontological subject. Together, they represent a new guard of writers probing ambition, morality, and selfhood with nuance and precision. Sohail\u2019s debut novel, Small Scale Sinners, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7109,"featured_media":309745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[350,5567],"tags":[6187,6259,6413,6360],"class_list":["post-309733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conversations","category-interviews","tag-motherhood","tag-pakistan","tag-womanhood","tag-writing-routine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPakistani Literature That Refuses to Pigeonhole Its Setting - Electric Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mahreen Sohail and 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