An Anthology of New Creative Writers from Pakistan
By Nazish Brohi

This anthology brings together the work of young, new creative writers to discover the fresh vantage points fiction offers amid the pandemic. Collectively, the stories help examine what otherwise festers in opaque foundations of society, and will continue to shape and fertilize societal conflicts well after the camouflage of normality is back in place.In the middle of the raging virus, a mother tries to find purpose in her bereavement as she wrangles through post-death bureaucracies, while a man finds reprieve from the overbearing humdrum in a Covid isolation ward.As the pandemic progresses, the stories morph and veer into desperation. A woman needs to pawn off her most cherished possession, a set of letters from royalty, and arranges a farewell for her album. Another isolates in the basement of a family home where deceased relatives appear and parts of her disappear and everything unravels.Others try to impose a normality by anchoring themselves in the mundane. Young women trying to leave the country, looking forward to being freer, with better education options, better jobs, and in one case, better toilets. Things become stranger, grimmer, surreal. In one place, encroaching darkness settles into the city and embeds in people's vision, and a photographer deals with failing eyes, instruments and relationships. In another, technology provides an escape route to altered consciousness as the government finds more and more people to be burdensome citizens and devises a final solution.The stories offer perspectives from the here-and-now, towards how the crisis unfolded, and in the unfolding, how alternative futures were imagined. Vasl hopes such creative expression will create space for collective introspection, reflecting on what crises help teach, create or undo, and prompt thinking through its individual, familial, community, political and economic manifestations.