Taha Kehar
Taha Kehar is a novelist, journalist and literary critic. A law graduate from SOAS, London, Kehar is the author of three novels, No Funeral for Nazia (Neem Tree Press, 2023), Typically Tanya (HarperCollins India, 2018) and Of Rift and Rivalry (Palimpsest Publishers, 2014). He is the co-editor of The Stained-Glass Window: Stories of the Pandemic from Pakistan. Kehar has served as the head of The Express Tribune’s Peshawar city pages and bi-monthly books page, and worked as an assistant editor on the op-ed desk at The News. Kehar’s essays, reviews and commentaries have been published in The News on Sunday, The Hindu and South Asia magazine and his short fiction has appeared in the Delhi-based quarterly The Equator Line, the biannual journal Pakistani Literature and the OUP anthology I’ll Find My Way. Two of his short stories appeared in an anthology titled The Banyan and Her Roots, which has been edited by the British writer Jad Adams. In 2016, he guest-edited an issue of The Equator Line, titled ‘Pakistan: After The Stereotypes’, that focused on new writing from Pakistan. Kehar curates Tales from Karachi: City of Words, an Instagram e-anthology that publishes flash fiction from and about Karachi. He recently compiled and edited the first print anthology of the initiative titled Tales from Karachi (Moringa, 2021). Based in Karachi, he teaches undergraduate media courses.
Praise for 'Typically Tanya':
"[Tanya's] story... cover[s] the formation and destruction of relationships." - Hindustan Times Brunch
"Typically Tanya explores the themes of freedom and negotiation [and] also looks at marriage and love." - The Asian Age
"It's a risky undertaking for a man to write in the female first-person, but one that the novelist pulls off with aplomb...Kehar is a good observer of human frailties and paradoxes." - Dawn, Books and Authors
"One of Pakistan's most exciting new writers." -The Express Tribune
"When Taha Kehar writes Typically Tanya, he borrows a page out of the Wodehousian narrative, but he does not go for the whole Wodehousian spirit. Instead, he fashions a world out of Karachi that is more Wodehouse and less Dostoevsky." - The News on Sunday
"Typically Tanya is like a breath of fresh air as it sparks hope that Pakistan has room for paperbacks." -Slogan Magazine
"A comical satire...a great book with an originality that is spellbinding." - Daily Times
Praise for Kehar's stories in 'The Stained-Glass Window':
“’Intruders’ is a hilarious account of a rich family planning their daughter's wedding during lockdown days, but even in this, the contradictions between the problems of the haves and have-nots are evident.” – Southasia Magazine
“Taha Kehar’s ‘Intruders’ deftly combine[s] the grim challenges of lockdown with much needed levity and I wish more stories in the book had followed this tone… Kehar’s second story calls attention to the plight of at-risk older adults who are used to the hustle and bustle of joint families and are now faced with the daunting reality of quarantine and social distancing. It is a sombre reminder of how the pandemic is compounding their already isolated existence.” – DAWN
“...in a standout story, ‘Intruders’, Kehar himself writes with characteristic exuberance about a wedding that has to be shifted on to the online setting of Zoom. Amid a gregarious but volatile joint family setting, an ageing matriarch, Mrs Akmal, laments the disruption to her granddaughter’s nuptials because of the ‘canola virus’.” – Claire Chambers, DAWN
‘Taha Kehar describes a Zoom wedding disturbed by an uninvited guest; in another story, he juxtaposes the solitude of a young girl and her elderly delusional neighbour during lockdown.” – Muneeza Shamsie, the Journal of Contemporary Poetics
Praise for 'Typically Tanya':
"[Tanya's] story... cover[s] the formation and destruction of relationships." - Hindustan Times Brunch
"Typically Tanya explores the themes of freedom and negotiation [and] also looks at marriage and love." - The Asian Age
"It's a risky undertaking for a man to write in the female first-person, but one that the novelist pulls off with aplomb...Kehar is a good observer of human frailties and paradoxes." - Dawn, Books and Authors
"One of Pakistan's most exciting new writers." -The Express Tribune
"When Taha Kehar writes Typically Tanya, he borrows a page out of the Wodehousian narrative, but he does not go for the whole Wodehousian spirit. Instead, he fashions a world out of Karachi that is more Wodehouse and less Dostoevsky." - The News on Sunday
"Typically Tanya is like a breath of fresh air as it sparks hope that Pakistan has room for paperbacks." -Slogan Magazine
"A comical satire...a great book with an originality that is spellbinding." - Daily Times
Praise for Kehar's stories in 'The Stained-Glass Window':
“’Intruders’ is a hilarious account of a rich family planning their daughter's wedding during lockdown days, but even in this, the contradictions between the problems of the haves and have-nots are evident.” – Southasia Magazine
“Taha Kehar’s ‘Intruders’ deftly combine[s] the grim challenges of lockdown with much needed levity and I wish more stories in the book had followed this tone… Kehar’s second story calls attention to the plight of at-risk older adults who are used to the hustle and bustle of joint families and are now faced with the daunting reality of quarantine and social distancing. It is a sombre reminder of how the pandemic is compounding their already isolated existence.” – DAWN
“...in a standout story, ‘Intruders’, Kehar himself writes with characteristic exuberance about a wedding that has to be shifted on to the online setting of Zoom. Amid a gregarious but volatile joint family setting, an ageing matriarch, Mrs Akmal, laments the disruption to her granddaughter’s nuptials because of the ‘canola virus’.” – Claire Chambers, DAWN
‘Taha Kehar describes a Zoom wedding disturbed by an uninvited guest; in another story, he juxtaposes the solitude of a young girl and her elderly delusional neighbour during lockdown.” – Muneeza Shamsie, the Journal of Contemporary Poetics
