In today's episode, we speak to Shahnaz Bashir, a Kashmiri novelist and academic from Srinagar.
In this episode, we speak to Shahnaz Bashir, a Kashmiri novelist and academic from Srinagar. He is currently a doctoral fellow and teaching associate in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Known for award-winning titles such as The Half Mother and Scattered Souls, Shahnaz's work revolves around themes of conflict, immigration and the intersection of identities within these spaces.
In this episode, Shahnaz takes us through some phenomenal books anchored in various shades of conflict, from JM Coetzee's Booker winning Disgrace, to Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands, to Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Through these stories, we try to unravel the nuances of colonialism and war, and how they manifest within oppressive structures in the everyday lives of ordinary people. As Shahnaz elaborates throughout our conversation, literature remains the most powerful act of understanding and diplomacy across time and space.