I n her debut collection of stories titled A Woman and the Afternoon Sun , writer and publisher Shahbano Alvi employed a rich, unsentimental voice to fashion tales spanning multiple genres and experiences. A New Pigeon on the Block, Alvi’s second collection, is a comparatively slimmer volume, comprising fifteen stories that are vastly different from those in her previous book. The blurb on the back cover, penned by author Aamer Hussein, reveals that Alvi has broadened the parameters of her creative canvas.
Her new collection “examines the lives of migrants, expatriates and transients in Edinburgh, Oxford, London and elsewhere.” Alvi’s stories have never been a prisoner to geographical locations. Her short fiction includes a heady mix of reflections on Karachi as well as some breath-taking reminiscences of the erstwhile East Pakistan.
In the stories published in A New Pigeon on the Block , Alvi’s narrators are far more peripatetic and seem to carry the spirit of different worlds within themselves. A conversation or the whiff of a familiar fragrance is all it takes to steer them back to homes they’ve left behind. Mercifully, the sophomore collection doesn’t depict the experiences of migrants in stereotypical hues.
Alvi’s stories aren’t burdened with clichés about lost homelands and geopolitical events that compel migrants to develop a complicated relationship with the lives they build for themselves abroad. On the contrary, the author approaches the subject .
