This week, You! takes a look at the books that are shaping conversations and popping up in group chats. Read on…
fiction
If 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that books aren’t just about stories; they’re about perspective, curiosity and the conversations we carry long after the last page. This year’s releases feel less like predictable launches and more like a vibrant mix of voices pushing boundaries, asking questions and digging into the complexities
of life, identity and society. Authors - both the ones we’ve been following for years and a fresh bunch making their first bold entries - seem to be leaning into bigger questions, stranger concepts and more personal storytelling. And honestly, it’s making the reading landscape a lot more fun. What’s interesting about 2025’s titles is how broad the spectrum is. Literary fiction is having a moment with character-driven stories that read almost like long, intimate conversations. Thrillers have taken on new angles, leaning into psychological twists instead of pure shock value. Nonfiction feels sharper and more grounded, especially in areas of culture, technology and identity. And then there are the hybrids - the books that don’t sit neatly in one genre but still manage to work, simply because the authors don’t seem worried about the usual rules.This round-up isn’t trying to crown “the best” of 2025 - reading isn’t a competition, anyway - but it’s a look at the books that are shaping
conversations, popping up in group chats, or quietly becoming the ones people push into friends’ hands. Whether you’re hunting for a weekend escape or something meaningful, this year had a little bit of everything. Think of this piece as your friendly guide through the shelves. Let’s dive in.
A New Pigeon on the Block
Kicking off this year’s list is Shahbano Alvi’s second collection of short fiction, a book that moves with the ease and instinct of a writer fully settled into her craft. In this new release, Alvi widens her lens, following the lives of migrants, expatriates and in-between souls scattered across the globe. Her stories drift between continents in a matter of paragraphs, Brighton to Chittagong, a London street to a Karachi garden, capturing the chaos of people who are always arriving, leaving or learning to stay.
What stands out this time is Alvi’s tonal range. Some stories dive deep with layered psychological detail; others are feather-light. She balances realism with a hint of the uncanny, allowing everyday mishaps, misunderstandings and brief moments of triumph to reveal bigger truths about displacement, longing, fractured relationships and the small, stubborn courage that keeps people moving through the world. It’s a collection that feels global yet intimate, grounded in place but driven by emotion.
Her previous work already marked her as a fresh and thoughtful voice in Pakistani English fiction, noted for its nuanced handling of East and West Pakistan. Critics praised its clarity, restraint and refreshing perspectives - qualities that continue to deepen in this new book.
Shahbano Alvi
Pakistan Lost
Shehzad Ghias’s ‘Pakistan Lost’ arrived this year as one of those nonfiction titles that immediately shifts the tone of any reading list. Known widely as Pakistan’s leading podcaster, Ghias has spent years airing sharp, unapologetically argumentative takes on politics, history, culture and national myth-making. This book takes that familiar voice and expands it.
In ‘Pakistan Lost’, Ghias digs into some of the country’s most sensitive, unresolved themes: the federalist vision tucked inside the Lahore Resolution, the persistent anxieties around minorities, the politics of language, the churn of civil–military relations, repeated constitutional crises and the waves of populism that keep reshaping the national mood. Instead of treating these as isolated issues, he connects them to a larger, ongoing puzzle: how Pakistan understands itself, and how that understanding keeps getting rewritten. What makes the book stand out is the analytical clarity threaded through it. Ghias blends historical detail, policy perspectives and contemporary realities without turning the narrative into a lecture. His approach is part critique, part investigation and part attempt to find a new starting point for conversations we’ve been circling for decades.
For readers who want a nonfiction title that doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable questions and isn’t afraid to rethink familiar stories, ‘Lost Pakistan’ offers a bold, thought-provoking addition to this year’s list.
Story Circle: Letters on Creativity and Friendship
Another standout release this year is ‘Story Circle: Letters on Creativity and Friendship’ by Taha Kehar and Fatima Ijaz. This book starts with a simple question: how do two writers, who are usually cast as competitors, end up collaborating? For Kehar and Fatima Ijaz, the answer is refreshingly ordinary: friendship. That grounding force shapes the entire collection, which unfolds through an exchange of letters that feel candid, searching and often disarmingly warm.
Kehar, known for his work as a journalist, critic and novelist, brings a sharp, reflective voice shaped by years of storytelling across genres. With three novels already behind him, he uses this book to peel back the assumptions around literary rivalry. The letters step away from the pettiness and posturing that often surround creative careers, creating instead a space where two writers can talk openly about process, doubt, ambition and the messy inner mechanics of making art.
The project itself is part experiment, part confession. Blending fiction, autobiography and straight-up correspondence, ‘Story Circle’ plays with form while quietly challenging the labels attached to both authors. For Fatima Ijaz, a Karachi-based poet and educator, the book captures the intensity of a five-week window in which two writers commit to speaking honestly from the present moment. The result is something that feels immediate, thoughtful and unexpectedly intimate, offering readers a glimpse into creativity as a shared, evolving conversation
rather than a solitary act.
Home #itscomplicated
Another notable 2025 release is ‘Home #itscomplicated’, an anthology built on a conviction many Pakistanis quietly share: a country this vast, diverse and deeply lived-in can’t be summed up by headlines or the shorthand images that keep circulating internationally. The book pushes back against the familiar caricatures - terrorism, poverty, helplessness - and instead reminds readers of everything that rarely makes it into the global frame: riverine forests, coral systems off the Balochistan coast, mangroves within the Indus Delta and wildlife that belongs in documentaries rather than footnotes.
But this isn’t a glossy postcard version of Pakistan either. The anthology brings together an unusually wide mix of voices, filmmakers, scientists, doctors, intelligence personnel, journalists, actors, academics, students, entrepreneurs and homemakers - each writing from their own lived reality. They acknowledge the front-stage issues we all recognise: hunger, violence, hypocrisy, privilege and the everyday grind that makes survival feel like its own skillset. Then they pull back the curtain and show what sits behind it: the small acts of care, the bruised attachments, the ambition that persists even in chaos and the quiet courage that rarely finds a microphone.
‘Home #itscomplicated’ doesn’t try to smooth out contradictions or stitch the country into a tidy narrative. Instead, it leans into the messiness, arguing that this complexity is the story. By letting lesser-heard voices take up space, the anthology becomes a reminder that Pakistan’s relationship with its people - and their relationship with it - is layered, personal and rarely straightforward. Exactly as the title suggests: complicated, but undeniably home.
Saba Karim Khan
Fundamentally
Nussaibah Younis’ debut novel ‘Fundamentally’ is a rare entry in 2025 fiction: a book that merges the personal and political with intelligence, wit and emotional depth. Drawing on her experience as a British-Iraqi political analyst specialising in Middle Eastern affairs, Younis turns her expertise into fiction, exploring counter-radicalisation work, international aid and the complex moral landscapes of intervention.
The story follows Nadia, a British-Iraqi academic navigating rehabilitation programmes for women formerly associated with ISIS. Written in first-person, the novel alternates between Nadia’s professional challenges in Iraq and her reflections on identity, relationships and the ethical dilemmas that come with her work. Nadia is sharply observed, deeply flawed and compelling - a protagonist whose ambition, personal trauma and ethical questioning drive the story forward.
Younis blends candour, biting social commentary and occasional humour to make complex geopolitics accessible without undermining their gravity. Themes of identity, redemption and moral ambiguity are explored in nuanced ways, offering a rare female-centred perspective on conflict zones and the bureaucracy that governs them. For South Asian and diasporic readers in particular, ‘Fundamentally’ resonates deeply, illuminating dual identities, cultural heritage and the human stories behind headlines about extremism and global politics.
It’s a novel that challenges assumptions, questions binaries and reminds us that the personal and political are inseparable - and never simple.
Nussaibah Younis
Saniya
Zara M’s debut novel ‘Saniya’ is one of those books that lingers quietly long after you’ve put it down. On the surface, it might read like a coming-of-age story, but beneath the calm narrative is a deeply introspective exploration of memory, loss, emotional honesty and the desire to be understood. It’s the kind of novel that doesn’t announce itself loudly, yet its subtle emotional intensity makes it hard to forget.
Set in Lahore, with recurring scenes at the chaotic, colourful Liberty Market, ‘Saniya’ moves between past and present, showing how formative childhood moments shape identity and emotional life. Through the lens of its protagonist, both as a child and as a therapist, the novel examines nuanced, everyday emotional neglect: a mother’s quiet unavailability, unspoken affection and the small gaps that leave lasting impressions. Therapy and healing are depicted not as tidy journeys, but as spaces full of missteps, awkward conversations and incremental personal growth.
What sets Zara M apart in the Pakistani fiction landscape is her focus on interiors - the thoughts, silences and delicate emotional textures that often go unremarked. Saniya’s story isn’t driven by dramatic events but by what is felt: the longing for attention, the slow accumulation of understanding and the subtle power of memory. It’s a novel about noticing, reflecting, and learning to live with the shadows of the past, all told in a voice that is emotionally intelligent, intimate and distinctly South Asian in its cultural sensibilities.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Karachi. She can be reached at [email protected]
