04 | Dear Jane — Reading Emma in Pakistan

Jane Austen's influence has spread well beyond the Anglosphere 250 years after her birth and today we consider the the parallels between Austen's Regency England and contemporary Pakistan. 

Laleen Sukhera is the founder of the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan (which has expanded to the Jane Austen Society MENAP - Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan) and grew up reading Jane Austen. Now based in Dubai, she shares the many similarities between tea time, the marriage market and expectations on women in Austen's time and the Pakistan of her youth. She also shares why she has a soft spot for the fabulously flawed Emma Woodhouse in Austen's fourth published novel, Emma. 

Listen to the other episodes in Dear Jane here.