Jackals: And Other Stories

Fiction is the form of literary art which has been chosen and practiced by Muhammad Asim Butt for the last three decades. With his stories whether novel or short story, he has recreated real life through his living characters; he has shown us the real face of the Pakistani society especially, when it comes to negated masses. He looks for characters scattered all around in the lanes and the crowded streets, identifies them with his unique creative perception and then paints them with harmonious and trustworthy words that incorporate a blend of real life colors on the canvas of harsh realities. Sometimes, he comes up with a contrast of supernatural occurrences, fantasies, mystery and eventful glimpses of what cannot be disassociated from life. It conveys the idea that societal disorder creates shapes of what is uneven and as a result his stories knit a purposeful ideology to form a face of many faces among us. Butt is a renowned Pakistani novelist, short story writer, translator and researcher. He has more than two dozen books to his credit consisting of two novels, two collections of short stories, and 18 translations from English into Urdu and vice versa. He practices his art both in Urdu and English. Muhammad Asim Butt did his masters in Philosophy from GC University, Lahore and started his career as journalist. He is a human rights activist and has spent a couple of years working as activist in the development sector. Nowadays, he is attached to the Pakistan Academy of Letters as Resident Director, Lahore. Butt’s novel Naatamaam has won prestigious “UBL Literary Excellence Award for 2015.”