BOOK

What is Saved: Life Stories and Other Tales

Between Fiction and Autobiography

By Taha Kehar | February 2025

Between Fiction and AutobiographyFor decades, British-Pakistani author Aamer Hussein’s oeuvre has stood out for its stylistic sophistication. His short story collections, novels, and memoir pieces are seeded with moving meditations on love, loss, and longing. Through its references to non-Western literary traditions and the skillful use of narrative techniques adopted in Urdu, Hussein’s work has widened the scope of South Asian fiction. In recent years, he has also penned a collection of stories in Urdu.

In What is Saved: Life Stories and Other Tales, Hussein adds new notes to his rich corpus of writing by exploring the flexible boundaries between fiction and autobiography. His new collection includes a diverse menu of stories, memoirs, modern fables, and faithful replicas of stories told by mystics. The twenty-one pieces in What is Saved possess a quiet, contemplative quality. The theatre of life, punctuated by an assortment of joys and tragedies, intrudes on the trajectories of Hussein’s characters with a whimper instead of a bang. The stories, therefore, resonate with readers long after the book has been put down, reminding them that a storyteller’s prowess doesn’t solely depend on the use of meaningless plot contrivances. The real measure of a writer’s skill lies in his/her ability to unearth what Sucharita Dutta-Asane, the editor of Hussein’s new collection, refers to as “the inner life… lurking behind [the words]”.

The memoirs in What is Saved aren’t a self-congratulatory performance in which Hussein remains at the heart of the narrative. In these pieces, Hussein emerges as an onlooker who emerges on the page through the people, places, and eras he evokes.

‘Words and Music’ turns the clock back to the 1960s when a young Hussein discovers that Pakistani film actor Shamim Ara lived in his neighbourhood in Karachi. Using this memory as a springboard, the author evokes a bygone era when his fascination with film songs and poetry took root. In ‘Uncle Rafi,’ readers are provided a glimpse of the brief literary career of the author’s maternal granduncle. ‘Teacher’ shows Hussein as a student to purple-robed Shah Sahab -- an Urdu teacher he encountered in London at a crucial juncture in his life. Through ‘Suyin: A Friendship,’ the author pays homage to Chinese-born Eurasian author Han Suyin, a close friend who urged him to explore the inner music of his mother tongue whenever he wrote.

Some of the stories straddle the place between fiction and autobiography by reimagining actual events through the crutch of fiction. Set against the backdrop of the pandemic, ‘The Garden Spy’ is centred around a narrator who grapples with grief, a life-altering cancer diagnosis, and the uneasy silence of lockdown. ‘February’ skilfully employs the second-person narrative perspective to depict the many facets of friendship. As he grapples with near-perfect companionship laden with disloyalty and emotional distress, the narrator reflects on the kinship he shares with trees. In ‘A Convalescence,’ Hussein uses a man’s affinity with a pigeon as a starting point for ruminations on the body’s connection with time and space.

At first glance, Pakistani readers may assume that What is Saved is merely an amalgam of the author’s previous two collections, which were published in Pakistan and repackaged for his faithful Indian readers. However, this collection also contains two new stories wherein Hussein revisits lived experiences through a fictional lens. ‘The Hunter Within’ features a narrator’s strained relationship with his younger friend, who helps him retrieve a suitcase containing his cancer medication from an airline. ‘The Cusp’ employs the motif of grief and memory as a means of understanding old and new friendships.

Written with flair and intensity, What is Saved solidifies Hussein’s reputation as Pakistan’s leading short story writer in English.