One Karachi afternoon, a bomb explodes at Cantt Station. An ageing communist poet, his estranged son, a young woman spinning tales for her brother, a reluctant writer looking for words for his broken city — told in a rich variety of voices.
“That rarest of rare things: a novel whose form is a near perfect expression of its content.”Judges’ citation, Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize — read in full
“A stubborn insistence on … the reconciliation of joy and suffering in the texture of everyday life.”The New York Times
“Its beautiful fragments coalesce to form an elaborate, haunting portrait of urban Pakistan.”The Guardian
“A vibrant, hopeful panorama.”The Wall Street Journal
“By the end of this book he had made me see that certain things are more beautiful and valuable for having been broken.”Nadeem Aslam
“A beautiful debut, and a blood-soaked love letter to Karachi.”Mohammed Hanif
“Breathtaking stories at every turn. A wonderful debut.”Kamila Shamsie
Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s novel and stories, translated from the Urdu. A small Karachi neighbourhood, a bakery owner who collects writers and geniuses, and a healer’s top-secret invention: the love meter.
PEN Translation Fund Grant.
“In Tanweer’s very capable hands this is one happy and safe journey – but a rollercoaster nonetheless.”Mohammed Hanif, Dawn
“Brims with charm, humour and humanity.”Moni Mohsin
Khayyam honks, chugs and zooms all day. Then he meets a friend who shows him a new way to see himself — and everyone else.
Buy in Pakistan →Bilal Tanweer translates from Urdu into English. His translations include works by Muhammad Khalid Akhtar, Sa’adat Hasan Manto, Ibn-e Safi, Bilal Hasan Minto, Sarmad Sehbai and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
With Pauline Fan, he spent a year curating “Translations: South and Southeast Asia” for the Commonwealth Foundation’s adda: 32 literary translations from 15 languages of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore, published in four issues.
He is on the board of SALT, the University of Chicago’s South Asian Literature in Translation project, and in October 2025 hosted SALT’s translation workshop at LUMS: two days with Daisy Rockwell, Luke Soucy and Jason Grunebaum for twenty-six emerging translators from across Pakistan.
Bilal Tanweer founded the workshop in 2012 with Osman Khalid Waheed (President, Ferozsons Pharmaceuticals) and continues to organize it every year. LYWW is the only creative writing workshop in Pakistan that is fully funded and residential for every participant. Young writers are chosen through a national short story contest and spend five days at LUMS.
The workshops are now taught by LYWW’s own alumni, who number several hundred.
writersworkshop.lums.edu.pk →Bilal Tanweer’s novel The Scatter Here Is Too Great (HarperCollins) won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Chautauqua Prize (US). The novel was also translated into French (Éditions Stock) and German (Carl Hanser Verlag).
His translation of Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s novel and stories was published as Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures (Pan Macmillan India) and received the PEN Translation Fund Grant. He has also translated two novels by the crime fiction writer Ibn-e Safi, The House of Fear (Random House India). With Pauline Fan, he curated “Translations: South and Southeast Asia” for the Commonwealth Foundation’s adda, featuring 32 literary translations from 15 languages of the region.
He is the author of the children’s book The Boy Who Thought He Was a Car (Ilqa, 2025), and was Chair of Jury for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His writing has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Dawn and The Caravan. He lives and teaches in Lahore.
