On the eve of the 77 thh Anniversary of Pakistan’s creation, we are pleased to announce the winners of the biennial Bloomsbury Pakistan Book Prize 2024
Sanaa Alimia. Refugee Cities. How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan. University of Pennsylvania
Press 2022
Omar Kasmani. Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan. Duke
University Press 2022
Sanaa Alimia. Refugee Cities. How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan. University of Pennsylvania
Press 2022
Sanaa Alimia’s poignant rendering of Afghan lives in Pakistan is a topical and politically cogent scholarly intervention that establishes how refugees and migrants from Afghanistan have shaped Pakistani urban landscapes. That they have done so without access to formal citizenship is a remarkable feature of global south migration more generally and the book makes an important contribution to our understanding of how precariously placed communities can nevertheless weave themselves into the fabric of a city. Refugee Cities spans the urban landscapes of Karachi and Peshawar, connecting Afghans in Pakistan with other marginalised citizens through common bonds forged in the search for water, land and security, and in the perennial fear of eviction. Alimia’s work builds on several years of extensive ethnographic field work that is brought together in beautiful prose.
Omar Kasmani. Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan. Duke
University Press 2022
Omar Kasmani’s original scholarship uses an evocative form of writing to convey the pleasures and pains of everyday existence in Sehwan (the shrine town) and beyond. Queer Companions’ primary focus is on those who desire to initiate and pursue a fakir’s life. These are individuals who question inherited paths, who do not conform to normative notions of family and work, and who re-orient themselves to less-than-ordinary futures in their quests to become spiritual guides and intermediaries to the saint of Sehwan. Kasmani’s compelling ethnography discusses queer subjects and stories that are narrated through fakir life histories and grounded in a constellation of fakir-inhabited places in Sehwan. All this comes together in a highly readable and provocative book that makes us question what we read and hear about Muslim culture and Islam.
We extend our congratulations to Dr Sanaa Alimia and Dr Omar Kasmani. We would also like to acknowledge the three runner-up entries (listed in alphabetical order) for their excellent contributions to the study of Pakistan.
- Ilyas Chattha. The Punjab Borderland. Mobility, Materiality and Militancy, 1947-1987. Cambridge University Press 2022
- Yasser Kureshi. Seeking Supremacy: The Pursuit of Judicial Power in Pakistan. Cambridge University Press 2022.
- Ali Usman Qasmi. Qaum, Mulk, Sultanat: Citizenship and National Belonging in Pakistan. Stanford University Press 2023
The book prize is awarded to the most outstanding academic book published in English in the previous calendar years 2023 and 2024 on a topic or theme connected to the history / politics / society / economy / culture either of Pakistan within its present borders or of the communities of South Asia where the work is broadly relevant to Pakistan. The successful book is expected to make an original contribution to scholarly understanding of the lives and experiences of the people of Pakistan or South Asia.
Convener: Dr Maria Rashid
Selection committee:
Prof Kamran Asdar Ali, University of Texas
Prof Matthew Nelson, SOAS University of London
Prof Humeira Iqtidar, King’s College London
Prof Yunas Samad, LUMS
We are grateful to the convener and the selection committee for handling the book prize with due diligence.
Book Prize Guideline
Book Prize 2022
© Bloomsbury Pakistan 2024