Hoops of Fire: Fifty Years of Fiction by Pakistani Women

by Aamer Hussein (Editor)

English (translation)

Paperback

First published February 3, 2000

About the author

Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in 1970 for further education after a year at boarding school in India. He has a degree in Urdu, Persian and South Asian studies from SOAS, and later studied French, philosophy and psychology. He began publishing fiction in the 1980s in journals and anthologies. His first collection of stories, Mirror to the Sun, appeared in 1993, to be followed by This Other Salt, Turquoise, Cactus Town, and Insomnia. He has also published a novella, Another Gulmohar Tree (2009) and a novel, The Cloud Messenger (2011). His stories have been translated into many languages, including Italian, Arabic and Japanese. In 2012, he contributed four original stories and a memoir in Urdu to the Karachi journal Dunyazad. Hussein, who is also an essayist and critic, is Professorial Writing Fellow in the Department of English and Humanities at the University of Southampton, and a Senior Fellow of the Institute of English Studies at London University.

Reviews

[Jessica Haider · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for my birthday from my friend. I have a great interest in Pakistani and Indian culture, so this was a great gift. The book contains 12 short stories written by women including Farkhanda Lodhi, Umme Amara, Razia Fasih Ahmed, Khalida Husain, and Mumtaz Shirin. Many of the stories deal with Partition and its aftermath. I enjoyed some stories better than others. My favorites included "Parbati" by Farkhanda Lodhi, which told the story of a woman crossing the border during war. "Godfather" by Khadija Mastoor was also striking. This story was about a woman hardened and living a harsh life. Exile by Jamila Hashmi tells the tale of a woman who is brutally seperated from her family during Partition. I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about what it could be like to be a woman in Pakistan.