Stories by Aamer Hussein
I first visited Hyderabad Deccan with my father just before I turned 13. I had a first cousin there whose children...
Published 30 Nov, 2025 06:41am
Many years ago, an editor at Critical Muslim asked me to contribute an essay to an issue she was preparing, on the...
Published 28 Sep, 2025 07:23am
I hadn’t given the matter much thought until today, but I notice that most of my last several columns have been about works in...
Published 27 Jul, 2025 08:19am
November, 2023. On the top floor of the Shard, a very modern building near the Thames, there’s a prize-giving for...
Updated 27 Jul, 2025 08:18am
My copy of So Long a Letter is dated September 1986. That year, I was feeding my imagination on what we then quaintly referred to
Published 23 Mar, 2025 08:35am
On a fine, cold November afternoon, I am sitting at a restaurant with Naila Khan, a friend from Dhaka, who is ...
Updated 17 Nov, 2024 11:23am
Autumn, 1979. At a church in Hammersmith, [London,] Ted Hughes reads from his collection Crow, which my friend buys...
Published 15 Sep, 2024 08:34am
One Sunday morning in Karachi — I was eight — I heard my mother telling my father about a film she’d seen that Sunday morning,...
Published 14 Jul, 2024 08:51am
“This tale is steeped in the colours of the East and its connection to the conventions of Urdu literature is so deep,” writes...
Published 12 May, 2024 09:56am
“I’m puzzled. You have Khadija and not Hajira,” Qurratulain Hyder — who mentored my progress in reading...
Published 10 Mar, 2024 07:25am
I am homesick, I wrote to a friend in Kashmir who hasn’t left his native town in about a year, and is now ...
Published 07 Jan, 2024 07:14am
Sometimes the weight of the world’s problems forces you to seek the refuge of memory and fiction. And the uncertain weather,...
Published 05 Nov, 2023 08:23am
Late last Sunday evening I was browsing Netflix for a good film to watch when, to my surprise, I found a screen adaptation of one
Published 30 Apr, 2023 08:23am
About 30 years ago, when I plunged into the ocean of Urdu fiction with the enthusiasm of someone learning to swim, I asked...
Published 26 Jun, 2022 11:16am
“Myths, legends, tales, they are all part of our heritage which mark the way we think, live and see the world,”...
Published 08 May, 2022 09:17am
There’s a tree, not far from my home, that blooms for about a fortnight. No one has yet been able to tell me...
Published 13 Mar, 2022 07:12am
After a sunny Christmas day in Karachi, I left the following dawn for London, aware of the cold, the miniscule days...
Published 23 Jan, 2022 07:06am
There isn’t only love for a person; there is your love for your everyday things. I love nature above all. It attracts me more...
Published 05 Dec, 2021 07:01am
Akbar, my occasional partner at literary Snakes and Ladders, wants to write a story with me as its main character. It’s taken him
Published 17 Oct, 2021 06:39am
Last Monday evening — three days before her novel Sunlight on a Broken Column and her collection of stories ...
Published 29 Aug, 2021 07:06am
