"Bitter Gourd" and Other Stories

The 17 short stories in this collection are focused on the social structure of life in Pakistan and of Pakistani in diaspora: such a focus covers each strata of society centered round daily small events.

Talat Abbasi is one of the best-known fiction writers in English writing about the Pakistani experience. This is a collection of seventeen short stories that explore the worlds of Pakistanis in Karachi and its environs, and of Pakistanis in New York. Collectively the stories portray each strata of contemporary Pakistani society, from the privileged upper classes to servants.