LAHORE: The second day of the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) 2019 attracted thousands of started with the talks about the people including literati, scholars, intellectuals and youth.
Speaking the session titled ‘A city in fiction’ speakers including Muneeza Shamsie, Roopa Farooki and Osama Siddique discussed Lahore’s stories, streets, violence, and provincialism. The session was moderated by Claire Chambers, who is lecturer in Global Literature at the University of the York.
Muneeza Shamsie was of the view that Lahore was the centre of Pakistan Movement. “Authors while writing about Lahore have written about Mughal era’s architecture but one aspect of Lahore was hardly discussed by authors.
“I found a book in British Library about a Pakistani Canadian Christian who used to live in Lahore in 1950s. He has explained about the life of Christians in Lahore in that era. This aspect of Lahore, I believe was not explained much,” Muneeza said.
Osama Siddique said that Lahore is special city in terms of history and architecture, but Multan and Peshawar are also very old cities. “Lahore is few hours’ drive away from world’s two renowned civilizations,” he said.
Pakistani literature being written in English has its own importance. “But I have been influenced by the literature in Urdu as well specially Bano Qudsia’s work,” he said adding that her novel Raja Gidh and Lawrence Garden has depicted the true picture of the society and its issues.
Osama said Urdu authors have their own significance because they are being read by large number of people.
In session titled ‘Channeling Nostalgia The Ottomans, the Great War and Turkey Today’ the Oxford University historian Eugene Rogan said that current ruler of Turkey Tayyip Erodgan is romanticizing the Ottoman Empire and following in the steps of Ottomon rulers. He said that Ottoman empire became weak in earlier 20th century and it was Attaturk who saved Turkey.
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