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Pakistani writer Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s famous novel of the Karachi neighbourhood of Chakiwara, along with other short stories also set in the same place, have been collected through English translations in Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures. The book can inspire great envy for any writer – Akhtar’s rip-roaring humour, and translator Bilal Tanweer’s formidable skills in recreating it in a new language stand out.

Chakiwara, a forgettable corner in Karachi’s Lyari – yes, the same Lyari which has shot to infamy after Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar – is bustling with bumbling fools, odd beauties, and fearsome djinns. From this mix, one can pluck out starving novelists, dubious doctors, cheating out-of-work actors, and a Buddhist Chinese dentist who has washed up on the locality’s unenviable shores. Karachi might be Pakistan’s financial capita; but Chakiwara is untouched by its glamour or economic prosperity.

The decrepit state of the neighbourhood makes one thing clear – the good folks of Chakiwara are desperately poor and live substandard lives. The resident doctor, Ghareeb Muhammad, started off as a land registrar and has been responsible for sending more patients to the grave than restoring them to health. The blockbuster novelist Qurban Ali Kattar has written scores of detective novels but has...

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