A writer profiles Karachi’s everyday citizens, highlighting their fears and hopes
The past year has not been kind to Pakistan. The pandemic has crippled the country, leaving limited capacity to battle another contagion: bad PR.
2019 saw the launch of Sanam Maher’s
A Woman Like Her and in 2020 we read Declan Walsh’s
The Nine Lives of Pakistan. British freelance writer Samira Shackle’s newly released
Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City completes a carnage trilogy, revealing the “sectarian and ethnic resentment mingling with politics and organized crime,” as she writes on the city of 20 million.
Diplomats loyal to the Myanmar military authorities seized control of the embassy on Wednesday
Ambassador Kyaw Zwar Minn says defense attache had taken over the mission in ‘a kind of coup’
Updated 08 April 2021
April 08, 2021 05:57
LONDON: Britain on Thursday condemned “bullying” by the Myanmar junta after the country’s ambassador to London was ousted in an extraordinary diplomatic coup after calling for the release of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Diplomats loyal to the Myanmar military authorities seized control of the embassy on Wednesday, leaving ambassador Kyaw Zwar Minn locked out in the street.
The ambassador said the defense attache had taken over the mission in “a kind of coup,” two months after the military seized power in Myanmar.
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In Karachi Vice, journalist Samira Shackle tracks the lives of a Karachi ambulance driver, street school teacher and crime reporter amongst others - and uses their story to map a history of different political groupings across the city and the recent decades. New Generation Thinker Majed Akhter from Kings College, London researches water shortages and dam building. Ejaz Haider is a journalist based in Lahore. They share their views of Pakistan with Rana Mitter.
Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Contested City by Samira Shackle is out now from Granta and has been a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week available to listen on BBC Sounds. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p034wrq4
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