Everyone wants to read Military Inc. by Ayesha Siddiqua which sold out on the day of its launch! An academic work, the book explores the phenomena of the military as a business enterprise worldwide, but using Pakistan as a case example.

Mohsin Hamid's second novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist has been on the New York Times bestseller list and is one of the most fascinating and challenging books I have read for a long while. The very last line not only brings home its cleverness and sophistication but generates discussion. This spare, subtle and lucid, 111-page story consists of a monologue by Changez, a young Pakistani man with a stranger, an unknown, nameless American in Lahore's Anarkali bazaar. Changez is as verbose as the American is silent. Changez speaks of his infatuation and later, disillusionment with the United States to provide a incisive portrait of the relationship between America and Pakistan, Americans and Pakistanis and indeed the attitudes of citizens belonging to an all-powerful country towards others. The novel moves from Changez's years at Princeton, his high powered job in the New York financial world, to sojourns in Greece, Chile, Philippines and ultimately his decision to return to Pakistan, his homeland. The Afghan and Iraq wars, 9/11, Indo-Pakistani tension are all built into Changez's narrative, as is Changez, rather sad, unfulfilled love for an American girl, which becomes a metaphor for the novel's larger themes.

I greatly enjoyed a lyrical first novel Passarola Rising by Azhar Abidi, a Pakistani Australian writer, a finalist for the 2006 Melbourne Prize for Literature. Abidi's assured and sparkling debut revolves around a historical character Father Bartolemeu, an eighteenth century Jesuit priest of Brazilian origin who made aviation history with his demonstration of his flying ship, 'The Passarola' (Great Bird) 'a hybrid of a balloon and a glider' before the Portuguese court in 1709. But the Inquisition threatened him with sorcery and he had to flee. Abidi goes to create a wondrous tale, a flight of fantasy which prolongs the life and adventures of Bartolemeu by another thirty years. Narrated by Bartolemeu's brother and flying companion, Alexandre, this sparkling, imaginative novel draws introduces Diderot, Newton, Voltaire to capture the spirit of the Enlightenment and its challenge to religious obscurantism. There is a stimulating debate about individuality and choice based on the religious and scientific beliefs of the time. In Abidi's story Alexandre and Bartolemeu fly away in The Passarola from Portugal to France. There they meet Louis XV of France, rescue the Polish king Stanislaus, participate in a naval battle from the air and embark on a voyage of discovery to the Arctic which provides the book with some of its most poetic writing.

Send in The Idiots Or How We Grew to Understand The World by Kamran Nazeer is a truly remarkable book by an autistic author of Pakistani origin who is now a policy advisor in Whitehall. Nazeer was at a pioneering school in New York which had a special nursery class for autistic children. Twenty years later, he went back to the United States to meet former classmates "to find out how they have emerged into adulthood". Nazir's illuminates their lives, sometimes using small details using his reactions to give an insight into autism: his own story emerges very gradually. There is Andre, a computer scientist in Boston who prefers to talks through puppets he skillfully manipulates, but has to guard against his temper. In Chicago, Randall who works as a courier and lives with his partner Mike and comes to realize Mike is taking advantage of him. Craig, the echolic boy who used to say 'Send in the Idiots' in nursery class, has become a speech writer for the Democratic party. Nazeer says: "The problem with Craig and me is that we can only do argument. We don't have the wherewithal for creating or sutainining affinity. When we write a speech it's argument that we look for. We need there to be a chain of reasoning between the paragraphs. We need there to be a structure." Through his sympathetic portrait of Henry and Sheila the parents of Elizabeth, who committed suicide, Nazeer comes to understand much about his own parents and how they guided him and yet gave him space to follow his wishes.

I have been spellbound by The Selected Writing of Eqbal Ahmed (foreward by Naom Chomsky, edited by Carollee Bendelsdorf, Maragertet Cerullo and Yogesh Chandrani). Ahmed (1933-1999) was a man of towering intellect, venerated internationally and greatly under-appreciated in Pakistan though he did have a strong faithful following among the many readers of his columns in Dawn. Divided into five sections, each with an introduction by one of the editors, Selected Writings covers Ahmed's views on guerrilla warfare, American imperialism, third world fascism, Algeria, Iran, Palestine, Bolivia, South Asia, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All these makes it apparent that Ahmed's views are as relevant today as they were in his lifetime.

Muniza Shamsie has edited three anthologies of Pakistani English writing. She is a regular contributor to Dawn newspaper, Newsline and She, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and www. LitEncyc.com.