Feryal Ali Gauhar

Feryal Ali Gauhar read Political Economy at McGill University. She trained in documentary film production in Europe and at the University of Southern California. Her first novel, The Scent of Wet Earth in August (2002) was based on her film, Tibbi Galli. She teaches film at the National College of Art, Lahore, works as a development communications specialist, and writes for Dawn. She has also been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund.

Newsclips

Conversations with novelist, filmmaker, feline aficionado, and femme fatale, Feryal Ali Gauhar, as she prepares to launch her second novel in the Jahane Rumi blog.

The Birds have Stopped Singing in Afghanistan. Article in Tehelka, 16 Oct 03.

I write to maintain my sanity. In the Hindu, Sep 2005.

Bibliography



No Space for Further Burials
Women Unlimited, 2007

The diary of a US Army medical technician incarcerated by warlords in a mental hospital in Afghanistan. The novel explores the deaths suffered by Afghans and Americans in contemporary Afghanistan.

In the silence, I speak Article in Sur, a Spanish newspaper.

A woman of accomplishment. Article by Raza Rumi, on Pakistaniat.com

The Scent of Wet Earth in August
Penguin, 2002

Kucha Miran Shah has seen better days.  Filled with buildings built centuries ago by courtiers for courtesans, it is now a place frequented by drug addicts and dropouts. Here, set amidst Charlie Video Palace, Green Star Ladies Clinic and Dilawar?s ?two-rupees? cart, with the Badshahi Masjid looming in the background, is the crumbling Begum Haveli. It is home to Fatimah, a mute girl injured in an acid attack as a baby, and her three surrogate mothers, all retired courtesans. Between her duties at the haveli, Fatimah searches for love, first with Bobby, brash owner of the video parlour, and then Shabbir, the young apprentice priest at the mosque. But hope is at a premium in Kucha Miran Shah, refuge of the defeated and the destitute.   There is Mumtaz, Fatimah?s mother, a woman ruined by passion and her drug addiction; Raunaq Jehan, Shamshad Bai and Pyaari, Fatimah?s guardians, bereft now of youth and beauty, which was their only wealth; Aatish-baaz Aaliya, former circus woman crippled in an accident; and Moulvi Basharat, a man trapped in his own world of misery, made ruthless and possessive with age. Fatimah and Shabbir dare this gloom, only to be beaten back by cruelty, betrayal and superstition.

Interview with four Pakistani women writers in the Telegraph.

In the loveless lanes of Lahore. Review in the Sunday Tribune.

South Asian Women authors
Sawnet Bookshelf
Sawnet