The Mercurial Mr Bhutto and Other Stories launched

LAHORE: Debut collection of short stories “The Mercurial Mr Bhutto and Other Stories” by journalist and writer Maheen Usmani was launched on the concluding day of the 7th annual edition of Lahore Literary Festival (LLF’19) at Alhamra here on Sunday.Essayist and fiction writer Soniah Kamal sat with Maheen Usmani and talked about the book which according to Maheen Usmani covered wide range of topics from politics, media to society.About the first story “The Mercurial Mr Bhutto” in her book Ms Usmani said that was a fictional story on a non-fictional character seen through the eyes of a child. According to her she tried to demystify late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, in her story. She added people had love or hate relationship with political leaders.Ms Usmani recalled as to how she used to hear a lot about Bhutto from her father and as to how she interviewed different people to write “The Mercurial Mr Bhutto”. About her motivation to write the book she said her parents used to appreciate her storytelling skills and suggested to employ these skills to write the book.Referring to Shakespeare’s phrase “Brevity is the soul of wit”, Maheen observed she tried to tell entire story keeping this very phrase in mind. In another story titled “15 Minutes of Fame” in the book, Maheen takes up ‘the breaking news’ issue highlighting as to how insensitive people have become in the electronic media industry.To a question by Soniah Kamal, Ms Usmani said social issues particularly those related to education and health did not get as much attention from those at the helm as political developments did and same was true with TV talk shows.As mentioned in preface of the book, another short story “Baby” illustrates an issue all too readily brushed under the carpet, because of a lack of trust and societal rules. Maheen said besides Manto, she read a lot of Russian and French writers before starting work on her book.People from different walks of life attended the book launch and put questions to the author during the question-answer session. Later talking to The News, Maheen said it was her first time at Lahore Literary Festival (LLF). She said her debut collection had nine stories and all of these were on different topics and not interlinked. “Everyone has his or her story,” she added.

from The News International - National https://ift.tt/2U0ZEKi