Aamer Hussein Books In Order

Novels

  1. Another Gulmohar Tree (2009)
  2. The Cloud Messenger (2011)

Collections

  1. Mirror to the Sun (1993)
  2. The Blue Direction (1999)
  3. This Other Salt (1999)
  4. Turquoise (2002)
  5. Cactus Town And Other Stories (2003)
  6. Insomnia (2007)
  7. 37 Bridges and Other Stories (2015)

Anthologies edited

  1. Hoops of Fire (1999)
  2. Kahani (2005)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Anthologies edited Book Covers

Aamer Hussein Books Overview

Another Gulmohar Tree

A lovely, strange and very moving novel. The colours and shape develop as you read while the couple’s mutual understanding moves forward and upward over the years like two branches of blossom meeting at the top of the tree. Ruth PadelUsman and Lydia meet in postwar London and fall in love. But as the years flit by, Usman feels a growing distance between them. When he realizes that he hasn t noticed the buds of the gulmohar tree unfurl, he understands that he has lost sight of his love for his wife. Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi in 1955 and moved to London in his teens. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The Blue Direction

Acclaimed in Pakistan and Britain, a major writer. excellent collection of stories, good reviews

This Other Salt

In this long awaited second collection from Aamer Hussein, he continues and deepens his oblique, subversive portrayal of the preoccupations of our time: betrayal, bereavement, exile, belonging and the writer’s role. In ‘This Other Salt‘ a writer, torn between two loves, looks for his lost words in the gap between memory, mourning and desire; in ‘The Lost Cantos of the Silken Tiger’ a poet revenges herself on her faithless lover by turning their romance into a biblical legend; and in ‘The Blue Direction’ a teenage boy’s life uncannily begins to resemble the role he plays in a school operetta. Combining satire, legend, poetry, history and memoir, the linked stories of This Other Salt reveal an author of uncommon talent at the height of his craft.

Turquoise

Direct and startlingly intimate, Hussein’s stories are set in troubled times in Karachi, Lahore and London amid war, partition, and military rule, the anticipation and anxiety of changing homes or cities, the mixed blessings of family life, the hopes and failures of love and work. Turquoise is a collection of stories that illuminate the passions and fears of a world more complex and more beautiful than the media images of Islam and Pakistan convey.

Cactus Town And Other Stories

Aamer Hussein’s fiction is informed by a rich tradition of Urdu poetry and an intimate knowledge of western writing, This volume collects sixteen of his stories, each elegiac in quality, and includes an introduction and afterword.

Insomnia

‘Drawing on legend, history, memoir, literature, and film, Hussein’s stories are meant to be cupped in both hands and savored slowly.’-Guardian

In his fourth collection, Aamer Hussein charts the geographies of leave-taking and homecoming, the consolations and rivalries of friendship, the yearnings of adolescence, and maturity’s tentative acceptance of longing. Moving from Karachi to England, through India, Java, Italy, and Spain, these exquisite stories engage with the grand narratives of our time.

Aamer Hussein was born in Karachi and moved to London in 1970. He reviews regularly for The Independent and The Times Literary Supplement. He has held visiting posts at the University of Southampton and the University of London, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Kahani

A naive peasant is left with a white man’s baby; a frustrated housewife slashes her husband’s silk pyjamas; a middle class housewife sees visions of salvation in the tricks of circus animals…
In this collection of stories by Pakistan’s finest women writers including Jamila Hashmi, Mumtaz Shirin, and Fahmida Riaz we are introduced to the intricate narrative patterns and compelling cadences of a rich literary culture. Equally at ease with polemic and lyricism, these writers mirror the events of their convoluted history nationalism and independence, wars with India, the creation of Bangladesh, the ethnic conflicts in Karachi in innovative and courageous forms. Influenced both by the Indian and Islamic traditions of their milieu and by the shocking impact of modernity, they are distinguished above all by their artistic integrity and intellectual honesty.

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