Usman T. Malik’s fables interconnect speculative fiction with local culture

Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan is an anthology by Usman T. Malik. In addition of being a keen storyteller he is also a practicing medical doctor based in Lahore. Malik is also the co-founder of the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction, which seeks to nurture science fiction writers of Pakistani origin.

This collection includes seven short stories published by Kitab (Private) Limited, the publishing house which is the brainchild of Musharraf Ali Farooqi.

The genre of the stories taps into various forms of speculative fiction. While each of the story is quite unique, the common denominator for all of them is the desi context around which they are developed. This combination of storytelling is what sets Malik’s writing apart from the rest of the mainstream fiction that is being produced in the country.

Generally when we think about speculative fiction, the stories that come to mind are the ones we grew up with, most of which are authored by writers from the western world. So starting out I was not really sure what Malik’s stories had to offer. My biggest fear was the use of a speculative setting with some local references thrown it to give them a desi touch. I was pleasantly surprised when there was not even a hint of such a storyline.

The stories are authentic to the core. They are set in very familiar settings and as they progress transport you to an alternative space. Our folk traditions have this imaginative storytelling embedded in them, unfortunately somewhere down the road they didn’t make it to mainstream local English literature. Midnight Doorways fills this void. From Lahore to the ruins of Mohenjodaro and all the settings in-between, Malik’s stories are rooted in our culture and build of these traditions to tell stories that will keep you glued.

While taking the reader to another realm these fables from Pakistan touch upon some very real issues that we face in our world; some in a very obvious ways like the terrorist attack on APS and some in subtle ways, highlighting misogyny, treatment of differently-abled individuals and the lack of disaster management in poor neighborhoods.

During a Mashable Pakistan Lab podcast I asked the author what made him choose this specific form of storytelling, to which he responded that he started writing stories that he could not find to read but was interested in himself. He has told the stories he was missing in quite an effective and entertaining manner.

Given that the collection is a first of its kind when it comes to the genre locally, an additional first is the graphic images that are used with each story. These images are visual representation of either the entire story or the crux of it. Each image has a different artist and at the end of the book you get to know in a manner of speaking the story of these artists as well. A community that not always gets its due compared to the rest of the world, this is a good example and hopefully respecting and compensating artists will become an industry norm in time.

Midnight Doorways is Malik’s debut collection, but his work has been published in several year’s anthologies before as well including; the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Million Writers Award, and twice for the Nebula. He has won the Bram Stoker and the British Fantasy awards.

Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on April 29, 2021.