The English Short Story in Pakistan: A Survey

• Muneeza Shamsie

The acquisition of English as a creative language in Pakistan (and indeed the other countries of South Asia) is the direct result of the colonial encounter – a literary inheritance which has continued to grow and develop to increasing critical acclaim over the last few decades. The focus of this international attention has been the Pakistani English novel while the Pakistani short story has been drowned under the collective term ‘fiction’ although it has had many practitioners since Partition. This article will concentrate on full length English story collections in Pakistan, not translations since English occupies a unique place in the literatures of Pakistan, as an erstwhile colonial language which continues to be used extensively as the language of the professional classes, government and by ex-patriates in the Anglophone diaspora.

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