Kairos

by Jenny Erpenbeck

translated by Michael Hofmann

ISBN 9781783786121

Granta

Reviewed by GAN AINM

It’s hard to avoid the idea of allegory when approaching Jenny Erpenbeck’s International Booker Prize-winner, Kairos. Right from the cover, we are told by Neel Mukherjee that ‘Erpenbeck has written an allegory for her nation, a country that has ceased to exist— East Germany’. The Booker Prize’s own website asks us to consider the merits of reading Kairos allegorically, and most reviews will come down on one side or the other regarding the device’s efficacy.

The story of Hans and Katharina, two East German citizens in the latter years of the state, begins at a moment of, seemingly, good fortune; a chance meeting on a bus in which passions are ignited and an affair ensues. The novel itself, however, begins long after this, when Katharina hears of Hans’ death and begins to sift through boxes of letters, diaries, notes and other refuse of their relationship. Hans is a former Hitler Youth, current writer, and married with a child. Katharina, far younger, was a member of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation, a socialist youth group collective designed to uphold the values of East Germany. Hans wields a patriarchal authority over Katharina, as well as, via his several affairs, his wife and child. He is well-travelled and learned, and his experience of life before (and beyond) the wall lends him an autocratic propensity that he wields culturally, familially, and sexually. There is, then, from this initial kairos, or ‘critical moment’, of their meeting, a disparity between the two lovers, one reflective of those between East Germany and its citizens. The GDR was the socialist-controlled portion of Germany following the end of WWII. To maintain order and prevent dissent, the government placed restrictions on the freedoms and movements of its citizens to travel to the capitalist West Germany over the Berlin Wall. By the late 80s, when the pair meet, they are living in a failing state, where the tensions spawned by government overreach would soon cause its complete (and in the case of the Wall, literal) collapse.

The novel makes this allegory clear through its explicit positioning of the personal and political:

Up and down. End of season sales, says her cousin. Bargain basement prices. Words Katharina needs to learn. She tries to remember what she was taught in civics about the difference between use value and exchange value. // And not once does the phone ring. // Is Hans sleeping with his wife on their vacation? Up and down, up and down, until everything that’s for sale is practically given away.
(p. 77)

Step by step, Katharina measures herself against her state, which has been generous to her and now counts on her to be generous in return. // Did he give himself up to her, or she to him? Or, if love is serious, are they indistinguishable?
(p. 86, 98)

The same can be said of the novel’s conspicuous allusions to walls:

Before they head out again, Katharina sees a photo of Hans on the desk. Can I have that? she asks, and Hans asks back: As a wall to contain imagination? (p. 30)

The immediacy with which these comparisons and references are made (being set up and paid off within a few pages if not the same paragraph) can sometimes work against the novel and reveal the limitations of a simple A = B, B = A comparison. However, I mention the debate around the novel’s allegorical reading up front in order to posit that Kairos is in fact far more interesting than the elevator pitch version of its premise; it is evident that the majority of Erpenbeck’s actual compositional choices point towards something at once broader and deeper.

Tension and unease is baked into Erpenbeck’s writing. The lack of clear subjects and verbs throughout the novel’s persistent use of sentence fragments leaves the reader dependent on their surrounding context, perhaps reflecting not just the young Katharina’s dependence on Hans, but the dependence of both upon the state. The use of run-on sentences speaks to a similar kind of reliance, this time the need for those in power to connect dots, draw conclusions, stoke suspicions; their frenzied amalgamation and need to reach and infiltrate everything is a kind of paranoia based in the fear of the agency of others, and the possibility for freedoms to undermine the (im)balance of power. Control is the shared element of these two seemingly incongruous techniques, and it is a control wielded by Hans as well as (and because of) the GDR.

Having lived through its creation, Hans sees the socialist utopia (and, because he is the one betraying his wife, the affair) as generative. It is not a preconditioned, or in any way stable, S/state, but a system which requires maintenance, regulation, continual reassertion and the quelling of potential threats to its stability. Such betrayals take the form of infidelities (against him) which engender ever greater controls that limit the freedom of dissidents. What Katharina’s affair-within-an-affair seems to represent for Hans, then, is the fear of her freedom, of her agency in moving beyond imposed bounds and barriers, and a choice in where her loyalty, her love, her body, can lie. As with all betrayals by combatants, there are punishments, and in her reaction to these, we again see the infusion of the personal and political, with Katharina initially reluctant to cross the Berlin Wall to the (comparatively) free and capitalist West. These sharp psychological observations shine through, and indeed create a powerful parallel between the troubled lovers and the collapse of East Germany, and yet Erpenbeck pushes her writing further.

There is a conspicuous and purposeful lack of speech marks throughout the dialogue, and even occasions when dialogue is not laid out traditionally:

Well, says Hans, I can’t swim. Why’s that? The water was too cold for me. Katharina shakes her head, disbelievingly. Really? she asks. And he replies: No, not really.
(p. 57)

This technique may again point towards the idea of control and the compelled language of totalitarian states; arranging the dialogue as we would a traditional paragraph seems to take away the agency of what is being said. However, it may also represent a kind of finality, or perhaps inevitability, and this may be the book’s most devastating decision.

If speech here is not granted a special, interventionist category, via speech marks, then these are not assertions being injected into the world, but solidified, spatio-temporally fixed elements of the world. They are past, no different in kind from the scenery or sensorial recollections of a now-defunct nation, recalled in imperfect fragments by the frame narrative. This device, where we find an older Katharina reflecting back with a general lack of the dependent fragments, furthers this conclusiveness with a perspective of birds-eye omniscience:

It feels good to be walking beside him, she thinks. // It feels good to be walking beside her, he thinks.
(p. 19)

He thinks, as long as she wants us, it won’t be wrong. // She thinks, if he leaves everything to me, then he’ll see what love means. // He thinks, she won’t understand what she’s agreed to until much later. // And she, he’s putting himself in my hands. // All these things are thought on this evening, and all together they make up a many-faceted truth.
(p. 27)

This all-knowing perspective, like the other devices here, speaks towards a certitude, to what is doomed to happen within an imbalanced relationship from the instant of their meeting; that critical moment contains within it a ‘good fortune [which] implied always [a] misfortune that was not just equal and opposite, but in its potential for harm, perhaps even much greater’, where ‘anything seems possible, anything good, everything bad’ (p. 91, 117).

To speak briefly of Michael Hofmann’s English translation of these techniques and themes, the aforementioned devices are all preserved effectively and reverentially. Other moments, however small, seem to take more liberties; it’s difficult to see, for example, how the line “that strange word ‘believe’, with ‘lie’ in it, is still going through her head when he has pulled down the straps of her dress” could maintain its specific wordplay (and implication) in the original German (p. 46). While this might seem pedantic, I mention it only for those with the capacity to read this text in its original language.

Erpenbeck’s book is crushingly absolute. It is tinged not just with the finality with which a memory is remembered, or a fragment recollected, but the finality that reveals the inevitable, and within the inevitable lies the inherent. Power imbalances do not become manipulative and abusive, but are abusive, always and already; they require a monopoly on agency, increasing coercions and restrictions on freedom lest the authority be challenged, or abandoned.

Everything in Kairos seems to speak towards this certitude, but it is hard to see the novel as defeatist. If the book does indeed function as an allegory, then it is, like all allegories, a warning, and an act of defiance. A warning cannot be for ‘a state that has ceased to exist’. It can only be for a potential, a future, dare we say a present, one in which there opens up the chance to heed the warning; to do, to act, to be, better.

GAN AINM is a writer born, raised and living in Lutruwita/Tasmania, currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Tasmania, and whose fiction and non-fiction has appeared in Island Magazine, and received second place in the University of Essex Wild Writing Prize.

Moon Wrasse

by Willo Drummond

Puncher and Wattmann

ISBN 1922571679

Review by MISBAH WOLF

When I first picked up Willo Drummond’s debut poetry collection, Moon Wrasse, I was torn between a deep panic of knowing I wanted to become mixed up in the muck, blood, and bloom of the work and wanting to also turn away from the words. Words are spells. Words are little invisible ties between what is captured and what is lost, and somehow, as if by magick, portals are opened for us to walk through. In a true sense, this is an offering from Drummond of a portal of initiation—you choose which kind—one you’ve already been in parallel with, one you have no memory of, or one you care enough to walk along with to experience and become more completely human.

I opened the book to the poem ‘Seed’ which, in a sense, introduces what I see as a quartet of work. I read;

At this season’s out-swelling
after the mangrove moon
she sets her grief in a small seed pod.
(7)

 I, myself, had been dealing with ‘unexplained infertility of ten years, and I wasn’t ready to read it, but the book called out for a conversation with me. I recognized it within my own immediate framework as a book of invisible connective tissue, a witch’s book of shadows, both literary and psychic, between the dead, the dreaming, grief, the acute attention to the breath of things and the indexing of transformations. This is a book where surfaces appear deeper once immersed, where continual intertextuality adds further dimensions, and no energy is ever lost since all is transmuted. A pause must be taken, and a return, like a Joseph Campbell Hero/Heroine, is undertaken; 

She’s looking for
a future to enframe the past

as it exceeds
it. Flickering familiar
like the pulse
of being needed.
(7)

Reading this work, I was able to chart a ship in the shadows of Drummond’s glorious book—through my own grief over childlessness, my estrangement from others/lovers, my deep love for ecology, for the mud and muck of various things I have lost, found, and re-imagined. These things grow in Drummond’s poetry through mud and shadow like mother mangroves, endangered blooms, and conversations with visceral transformations under ‘dappled light’. (60) Such love is to be invoked in the poem “Moon Wrasse” where the narrative etches through the shifting cycling as a lover/other/self that is;

here, moving in
our translucent
cocoon
‘self-made’ and safe
as houses— (60)
It is an homage to great love transforming and witnessing the beloved’s
new lucency—
clear as the blue
of your new man suit
                                sweet as the day
                               true as the day (60)  

This enamoured lover/narrator bears witness/encourages and celebrates this alchemical corporeality with tender reassurance in this delicate liminal space, 

holding hands
like younger lovers
in a film
in a dream.” (60)

The shape of the month as I read this work was also colored by other books at the same time. Fitting for such a book that plays, converses, and returns to dialogue entries, quotes, and habits of other poets and writers. Rest assured, Drummond includes notes about particular moments, words or passages from other writers in this book to show how interwoven and entangled this book is with others’ work. In The Childless Witch, Camelia Elias says: ‘The age we live in is, indeed, no longer an age of lamentation. We lost that art long ago’ (Elias, 2020). The reason I’m including this quote from Elias is that Moon Wrasse has developed a very delicate language of lamentation, with images of ‘striking,’ ‘scraping,’ and ‘digging,’ further propelled after Louise Glück—as in Drummond’s ‘The Act of Making,’ (11) using techniques of alliteration, words beating against each other, switching to words that require the tongue to be pushed gently through lips—there is a feeling when reading this poem and many like this, of incanting. In ‘The Act of Making,’ Willo Drummond employs a rich array of poetic techniques that enhance its incantatory quality. Vivid imagery and sensory language, such as ‘gardens fecund with memory'(11) and ‘imagined blooms heavy with the scent of hope,'(11) create an immersive experience, while enjambment ensures a seamless flow between lines, propelling the reader forward, as in 

          .How can you bear
so many imagined blooms heavy with the scent of hope
let go? (11)

The use of repetition and parallelism, like ‘day after day,’ adds musicality, and the alliteration and assonance in phrases such as ‘fluffed intentions’ and ‘solitary bees’ create pleasing sound patterns that my mouth wants to vocalise. Caesura introduces rhythmic breaks for emphasis/division/rupture of grief; 

                  Unwomanly. Bent queen
brimful of love shame with nowhere to dig
in (11) 

Also, the sharp juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, such as ‘love/shame’ and ‘hope/let go,’ deepens the poem’s emotional impact. Symbolism, unconventional syntax, and strategic line breaks contribute to the poem’s unique rhythm and pace, while personification and metaphor, like ‘remembrance scratches your knuckles’ and ‘bees hover, uncertain,’ imbue the poem with lyrical depth. These elements combine to make Drummond’s poem feel rhythmical and lyrical, making me want to read it out loud. And I do speak them and it is a pleasure to let the words slip and pause between my teeth and tongue.

We can look further into such poems as ‘Note to Self (in Novel Times)’ that inscribes like graffiti on an ancient/new wall to a future/past/now self, on a fridge pinned up by magnets to;

Remember to love
the world. Love
the wailing, rolling world;
the air; the wildness
of wind lifting a million kites
of change (72) 

Such a poem circles back through voice, through lamenting, through oracle (as Earth) as change always present to call one back home. In The Childless Witch, Elias also reframes such a being as ‘able to cast a powerful spell of movement, a movement that goes from trembling, to dance, to the use of voice, the oracle and a state of grace’ (Elias, 2020). Looking through Drummond’s book, these states of ecstatic magic—shadowy and bright—are evident in the language and invocations that run rife throughout this collection. There is a language of lamentation here, as previously suggested—of that which will not grow among the commonly seen, and offers instead the witch’s second sight such as in the poem ‘Ways of Seeing.’ This narrator is pensive with ‘portents’- where moon cycles are traced and named; 

While others turn with such precision,
radiant orbs—content
filled—I dream of conjunctions
luminous alignments
stackings of hope  (20)

This second sight seems always pensively aware of the delicate nature of life in ‘The Art of Making’ that we as readers intrude/bear witness/are gathered round to see ‘Somewhere, a ghost orchid blooms’ (12) This rare orchid/child/being blooms only once a year, pollinated by mimicking male sphinx moths deep in forests where it sucks the moisture from the air.

With this invitation from Elias—’trembling, dance, voice, oracle, and grace’ resound through Drummond’s work. There is even a further complexity established by which Drummond records in her notes at the back of Moon Wrasse that the line from the poem ‘Seed’, 

where what cannot be
is (8) 

gestures to Jennifer Moxley’s claim that ‘lyrical utterances record voices structurally barred from social and political power.’ (Drummond, 76). This first poem is set adrift from the four sections as a poem in motion, of coming up from elsewhere by will; 

here in the lyric tense

she stills to witness
each furred pod/
gain its wild purpose—’ (7) 

This feels like an invocation to voice, to the tiny seed to speak its will, to inscribe and to create. Again, a voice unheard/heard is set in motion in ‘Sail,’ where the other’s silent voice is;

voice, a gaping mouth, calls
from a crack in the world: desolate
wind, sweep my knowledge
into oblivion, drop me back
into the well. (21)

Read it aloud, read it softly and it could well be the words of shamed/guilty/lamenting Medea, such a misunderstood and maligned witch, also a favourite childless witch of discussion for Elias. (Elias, 85)

I have enjoyed framing Drummond’s work as part of a Quartet, a story perhaps like a cycle connected in four parts, likened to the four major phases of the moon—the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon, and the last quarter—because so much of the work makes invitations, invocations, and references to the moon. In Drummond’s section ‘The Art of Losing,‘ ‘Of Finding and Not Finding Levertov,’ ‘Forming and Transforming,’ and ‘Arriving,’ why not take this as a template, traversing phases of the moon? Considering that in my reading, I felt poetic tidal shifts under the witch’s tools of moonlight and water, whether inscribed as bodies, mangroves, fish in moonlight, or rare blooms sucking at the mist. I enjoy mysteries and puzzles and esoterica, so I have dug into this deep pleasure in making these connections through the language or merely literary pareidolia. But there are clues to make such connections, such as mention of the ‘spun to song of sun played at waning moon‘ (61) in ‘A Promontory/A Memory,’ and, of course, the poem ‘Moon Wrasse’—the fish that changes sex to mate and has a crescent moon on the caudal fin, the energy of such seems to suggest a letting go of what has been and finding hope in a ‘translucent cocoon'(21) moving towards the new moon. The new moon is, of course, the dark unseen moon. It is the place that calls for presence and to explore the unseen, and I pose that this is the beginning phase we enter from the start of the book, with poems that seem to scry into the unseen. Considering the first poem ‘Seed’ moves from the lines; 

In waning luminescence
on the aqua-terrestrial shore

she trains her eye
to velvet vivipary
on very salty water

She’s looking for
a future
to enframe the past
as it exceeds it. (7) 

It is the entrance towards the darkness of the new moon in the first quarter ‘The Art of Losing.’ In the new moon phase, there is no visible moon in the sky, and it is the time to explore the unseen, to call for presence, and to stretch the grief unfathomable into song and poetry.

The first poem of this quarter, “The Act of Making,” is indeed what Camelia Elias calls ‘the lost art of lamentation’(Elias, 15),  again inscribing vividly with a question; 

How can you bear
so many imagined blooms heavy with the scent of hope
 let go?” (11) 

Set behind this poem is hauntingly Glück’s ‘The Wild Iris’ (“Hear me out: that which you call death I remember”) like the wild Iris, reborn, returning from dissolution to ‘find a voice’—here Drummond masterfully extends the deep mystery of Glück’s poem of death and rebirth, and continues the esoterically charged moment to look for portents, to have knowledge of the rare ghost orchid ready to be born.

In this first quartet too, ‘Up to Our Knees in It’ explores the unseen mother mangrove beneath the surface, extending and connecting, living anywhere despite the ‘cinema seats and soft drink cans‘ (15) thrown into the waters.

Furthermore, Drummond’s poetry, particularly in the sequence ‘The Rilke Index’ and ‘Open Secret,’ showcases a profound engagement with the poetics of Rilke and Levertov. By using index items as titles and integrating verbatim citations, Drummond creates a rich intertextual dialogue. This approach pays homage to Levertov’s method of personal indexing and underscores Rilke’s enduring influence on Levertov’s work, which in turn feeds and nourishes Drummond’s. The titles and substantive material, marked by italics for Rilke and inverted commas for Levertov, reflect a meticulous synthesis of response, citation, and allusion (Drummond, 2021).

Central to Drummond’s poetry is the theme of attention and participation, echoing Rilke’s poetics. In ‘The Rilke Index,’ phrases such as ‘True singing/ is a whispering’ (35) and ‘It hums along the avenue of original grief polished as a stone’ which highlight the importance of quiet, attentive engagement with the world (Drummond, 2021). Similarly, ‘Open Secret’ uses the imagery of a Peltops singing her inwardness to suggest a deep, participatory observation of nature.

Drummond’s work exemplifies Rilke’s Ding or thing poetics through its focus on sensory, concrete experiences. The detailed imagery in ‘The Rilke Index’ and the tangible descriptions in ‘Open Secret’ underscore the importance of observing and interacting with the material world. This attention to the physicality of things aligns with Rilke’s belief that true insight comes from an intense, participatory observation of one’s surroundings.

Reflecting deeply on the nature of creation and the self, Drummond’s poems reveal a continuous journey of self-discovery. ‘The Rilke Index’ and ‘Open Secret’ meditate on the interconnectedness of self and creativity, suggesting a composite identity shaped by various influences. Drummond’s imagery, such as ‘the owl afloat, the white egret’ and ‘the blood, the plough, the furrows made,’ captures the essence of seeing with ‘second sight,’ a deeper, intuitive understanding of the world (Drummond, 2021). This second sight is the sight of the witch, the seer, the being that dares, even when nothing necessarily will come of it—to look and to record presence/absence. Not only is second sight present here, but also the Owl—the totem of Hecate—Queen of Witches, and the action of tilling the land with blood and earth, much like the ingredients for a spell.

Willo Drummond’s poetry collection extends the poetics of Rilke and Levertov, emphasizing immersive conversations with the world—the unravelling power of careful observation and recordings. This work also creates carefully layered, intertextual dialogues. These inscriptions highlight the profound connection between self/other, the environment/body, second sight/inscription—all of which is the (witch’s) work of invocation with moon, of birth, death, rebirth, of longing (and the language of lamenting), and a complete presence of ritual observation, a conversation with invisible/visible forces transmuting. This book is an homage to love and magick and finding ways to reinscribe very necessary and vital voices and existences that have slipped/been silenced/written over/unpublished/forgotten. But it is also more than an homage—it is script that spells out the nature of time, looks closely at the Fibonacci spiral of bodies in presence with each other, of lamentation and joy rupturing through—detailed and woven with the echoes of other writers and poets, insistently in deep relationship to ecology, to the unseen dance of interconnection, such as the spellcasting in ‘All of it’ as ‘an ecology of selves’ (67) which with tremulous blooms/hands/words/voices reimagined worlds, relationships and love.

References:

Drummond, W. (2021). The Rilke Index. TEXT Special Issue 64: Poetry Now, eds. Jessica L. Wilkinson, Cassandra Atherton & Sarah Holland-Batt.

Drummond, W. (2023).  Moon Wrasse. Puncher & Wattmann. 

Elias, C. (2020). The Childless Witch: Trembling, dance, voice, oracle, grace. EyeCorner Press. ISBN 978-87-92633-57-6.

The Djinn Hunters

By Nadia Niaz

Hunter Publishers

ISBN: 978-0-6453366-9-6

Reviewed by JAVARIA FAROOQUI 

The Djinn Hunters is a literary fusion of colours, words, shapes, and heritage, which has been carefully crafted in very interesting and distinct poetic styles. Nadia Niaz plays with the strands of her memories of Lahore to build evocative narratives in the short space of her poems, which occasionally carry elements of horror and the uncanny. Each of her fifty-one poems in this collection exhibits a wide range of expression and literary finesse that provides a refreshing, consistently engaging reading experience. 

The horror in The Djinn Hunters is not meant to surprise the readers into a terrifying shock, rather it aims to disturb the very core of everyday existence. The first poem, “A Map of Mothers,” is primarily about the transmission of traits from female ancestors and the genetic inheritance that spans generations. However, Niaz’s dexterous use of simple words infiltrates the generational story line, unsettling readers with the image of grandmother and great-grandmothers haunting the voice of the persona. Absence of punctuation not only scaffolds the sense of continuity but also a deep feeling of horror:

I carry my mother in my mouth
in teeth and warm
bladed tongue

one grandmother, long absent
haunts my speckled skin
the rhythm of my feet

the other finds herself
in the set of my chin
the stubborn song in my belly
(1)

The poem starts with the imagery of carrying the mother in one’s mouth and concludes with varied maternal legacies interweaving and moving towards a surreal and ambiguous sense of belonging. The absence of pauses around “home” emphasizes the continuous evolution of human inheritance and gestures towards the uncanny behind the word that mostly signals safety and surety. The way in which the poem moves forward accentuates the haunting presence of ancestors within an individual’s identity, reminding us of pasts that perpetually influence the present:

great-grandmothers twine
in my hair, lurk in my bones
score my palms with their directions

each one pulling a different way
each one pointing towards home
(1)

The collection boldly utilizes poetic forms that blend verse and prose in engaging ways. The experimentation with form sometimes includes lines of varying lengths or concrete shapes, or some visually absorbing style like the one used in “A Dream of Daadi’s Paan Daan.” The consumption of paan, a mouth refreshment made from betel leaf popular in South Asia, has strong associations of tradition and culture. The paan holder, or paan daan, has a significant material value because of its association with the elders in South Asian households, and as such it symbolizes a sense of cultural rootedness and refinement. Niaz enhances this cultural reference by incorporating a unique visual element in her poetry. She prints four words, “roll,” “chew,” “spit,” and “fold” in grey ink behind the main text in black, inviting readers to decipher the entire process of paan consumption that involves rolling and folding the leaf, chewing the leaf, and spitting out the excess red substance (3). This creative approach not only adds depth to the poem but also engages readers in an interactive exploration of cultural heritage. 

The Djinn Hunters extends its thematic reach well beyond its primary focus on djinns and a distinct sense of horror, to present a rich tapestry of different subjects. As a native of Lahore, I found Niaz’s striking and picturesque descriptions of the city’s sights, sounds, and smells particularly resonant and evocative. She manages to capture the essence of Lahore with meticulously crafted sensory details that allow readers to become part of the vibrant atmosphere displayed on the page:

The corners of this city sag under stories of generations
more numerous than the grains of imported sand lining
its avenues poised to be mixed into concrete buildings
(“Fine Aggregate” 23)

Heritage, continuity, culture, and belonging are the themes that run throughout this collection and scaffold the stylistic experimentations. There are sub themes of romance, politics, and feminism that emerge from the crafted verses in the form of powerful statements and images. For example, in the poem quoted above, a simile of pomegranate is used for young women walking on the streets:

Young women wander under strict instructions to stay close
crowded as pomegranate seeds, skins leathered against leers while
their mothers pick stones from rice and dhal and swallow smoke
(23)

The mothers and the young women are bound by traditional roles and surrounded by misogyny. In this collection of poems, Niaz often juxtaposes the push and pull of cultural and heritage to paint the ways in which women are marginalized in patriarchal societies. “August in Lahore” questions the socio-economic class divisions and the misogynist attitudes prevalent in Pakistani society. While the boys from the lower working class have the freedom to “dive” in the dirty canal, upper-middle-class college girls keep sweating profusely in their modest outfits of “starched muslins and lawns” (20). The socio-economic class of the characters in the poem is determined by the “burned earth brown” bodies of the boys and their usage of the city’s “filthy oasis” to find relief from hot weather, and the connection of cars and cell phones with the girls (20). The four stanzas of the poem are precisely divided into six lines, which consist of a single sentence that duly ends with a full stop, representing the restricted existence of young women. The young woman who is traveling in cars and studying in colleges gets to listen to the humble start of her father who used to swim in the canal like the boys. The classed and gendered differences between the boys and the female protagonist in the poems are emphasized when the girl’s father looks back at the freedom and lack of social capital in his youth but makes “no wish” for the daughter to experience something similar. The “filthy oasis” of the city’s “refuse” in which the boys are swimming implies a disadvantage and a reduction, which finds an echo in the feeling of “drowning” that envelops the upper-middle-class privileged woman. She is wrapped in “days” that are like a “wet sackcloth, a dragging, dripping/weight that air-conditioning cannot lift” (20). The extended metaphor of “filthy ocean” epitomizes the socio-economic and gendered restrictions in a patriarchal and underdeveloped country.

The Djinn Hunters finds its pace in the exploration of the human and extra-human existence. The collection presents temporal reflections on heritage, culinary practices, cultural rituals, and the nuances of different spatiotemporal settings. Niaz experiments with a wide range of literary forms in this book, taking considerable creative chances. Her methods include visual construction of landscapes of words, code-switching to Urdu, and inclusion of Pakistani locales and subtle cultural differences without any explanation for the intended global readership. Her willingness to push limits and provide readers with a diverse and multicultural experience is evident in these daring stylistic choices. Readers can indulge in the The Djinn Hunters experience for leisure reading purposes or choose to let the book take them on a literary journey. In either case, it will provide them with new insights and coerce them to view the world through an inclusive lens with literary sophistication. 

Dr JAVARIA FAROOQUI holds a PhD from the University of Tasmania, Australia, and works at COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Pakistan. Her recent book, Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic.