Second Coming

Author: M. Athar Tahir

₨1,295.00

SKU:978-969-716-229-1

A tour de force, Second Coming, a first novel by the author, explores the sacred and the profane in the life of the protagonist. The multi-layered narrative is seen through his eyes which both colour it and expose him. It cuts across several countries and cultures, belief systems and social structures, ages and genders. The novel deftly weaves literary and religious allusions and illusions into an absorbing, complex portrayal. A cosmopolitan childhood, challenging and successful middle age and the onset of the infirmities of ageing contribute to the unusual manipulation of the time frame. The past, present and future of a sensitive individual prone to doubt and hope, vulnerability and sureness, are laid candidly bare. It is a story studded with comic moments of self-delusion, folly and the ridiculous. Here, viewed from telling, faceted perspectives, is the human condition.

Category: Literature

Description

M. Athar Tahir is an Anglophone poet, essayist, short story-writer, art critic, art historian, calligraph-artist, translator and scholar of the Punjabi language. He was the Rhodes Scholar for Pakistan at Oxford University where he read English Language and Literature. His critical and creative work in English and translations from Urdu and Punjabi have been published in Pakistan and abroad. His books on Art, Culture and Literature have won ten international and national awards including the highest national award for Literature in English, the Patras Bokhari Award, which has been conferred on Athar Tahir thrice and the International Silver Award of Asia Pacific Publishers Association (APPA), Seoul, South Korea. Tahir is an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Letters. He founded the International Centre for Pakistani Writing in English (ICPWE) at Kinnaird College Lahore. The civil honours, Tamgha-i Imtiaz and Sitara-i Imtiaz were conferred on him.