Encouraging comments by Professor Karen Leonard (UC Irvine) about my book.
What a package of diverse pleasures Moazzam's new collection of short stories proves to be! Cafe Le Whore is the title (well, OK, if I didn't like that story best of all I might have expressed hesitation about the title), and the range of settings and characters is so impressive. From rural Punjab to urban Lahore and San Francisco, Moazzam writes masterfully of personalities and contexts; here and there one glimpses Moazzam himself, tantalizing and deftly presented. Sex in the present, sex in the past, women's lives, men's lives, memories recaptured or lost...these are his themes, his obsessions. Very rewarding reading.
Comment posted by Dr. Omar Ali at Amazon page of Cafe Le Whore:
It works because Moazzam is not interested in writing "Pakistani" fiction or "Western" fiction. Just stories, about people, in strange places, sometimes doing strange things, but always human, all too human . . . Funny too. Very funny at places.
What a package of diverse pleasures Moazzam's new collection of short stories proves to be! Cafe Le Whore is the title (well, OK, if I didn't like that story best of all I might have expressed hesitation about the title), and the range of settings and characters is so impressive. From rural Punjab to urban Lahore and San Francisco, Moazzam writes masterfully of personalities and contexts; here and there one glimpses Moazzam himself, tantalizing and deftly presented. Sex in the present, sex in the past, women's lives, men's lives, memories recaptured or lost...these are his themes, his obsessions. Very rewarding reading.
Comment posted by Dr. Omar Ali at Amazon page of Cafe Le Whore:
It works because Moazzam is not interested in writing "Pakistani" fiction or "Western" fiction. Just stories, about people, in strange places, sometimes doing strange things, but always human, all too human . . . Funny too. Very funny at places.
