Grieving for Pigeons, Revised Edition
128 pages, 5 x 8
Paperback
Release Date:29 Feb 2024
ISBN:9781771994316
Grieving for Pigeons, Revised Edition
Twelve Stories of Lahore
By Zubair Ahmad; Translated by Anne Murphy
SERIES:
Mingling Voices
Athabasca University Press
In this poignant and meditative collection of short stories, Zubair Ahmad captures the lives and experiences of the people of the Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan. In an intimate narrative style, Ahmad writes a world that hovers between memory and imagination, home and abroad. The narrator follows the pull of his subconscious, shifting between past and present, recalling different eras of Lahore’s neighbourhoods and the communities. These stories evoke the complex realities of post-colonial Pakistani Punjab. The contradictions and betrayals of this region’s history reverberate through the stories, evident in the characters, their circumstances, and sometimes their erasure. Skillfully translated from Punjabi by Anne Murphy, this collection is an essential contribution to the wider recognition of the Punjabi language and its literature.
Zubair Ahmad is the author of two poetry collections, three short story collections, a translation, and a collection of essays, all written in Punjabi. Two of his short story collections were finalists for the Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature in 2014 and 2020. He lives in Lahore, Pakistan. Anne Murphy is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the vernacular literary and religious traditions of the Punjab. Grieving for Pigeons is her first book-length translation.
Introduction / Anne Murphy
Waliullah Is Lost
Bajwa Has Nothing More to Say Now
Dead Man’s Float
Pigeons, Ledges, and Streets
The Beak of the Green Parrot, Submerged in the River
He Has Left, and Won’t Be Back
Sweater
Unstory
The Estranged City
The Silence of Saints
Half Maghar Moon
The Wall of Water
