Tobias Matern in conversation with Mohammed Hanif

PAKISTAN – A CASE OF AN EXPLOSIVE SOCIETY?

Pakistan has recently drawn international media attention due to renewed tensions with neighboring power India. The ongoing conflict in the disputed region of Kashmir was again at the brink of an escalation but has been luckily contained, raising concerns about the potential for open confrontation between the two nuclear-armed states. At the same time, Pakistan faces significant internal challenges: military dominance, declining civic freedoms, deep-rooted social inequality shape the fabric of daily life – and Islamic extremists challenge the state. “In Pakistan, the tap water should contain anti-depressants so that people don´t lose their minds”, says Mohammed Hanif.

From his unique and insightful perspective, Hanif will offer an in-depth look at contemporary Pakistani society—and reflect on the direction in which the country is headed.

Mohammed Hanif is a British-Pakistani novelist, journalist, and playwright born in Okara, Pakistan, in November 1965. A former pilot officer trained at the Pakistan Air Force Academy, he transitioned to journalism and later to fiction writing. His debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008), was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel. Hanif’s subsequent works include Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011), Red Birds (2018), and the opera libretto Bhutto. He writes regularly for The New York Times, The Guardian, and the BBC, and divides his time between Karachi and London.

Tobias Matern, born in 1978, is head of international politics at the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich. He studied political science in Berlin and attended the American University School of Journalism in Washington D.C. on a Fulbright scholarship. Matern has been with SZ since 2004. He was a correspondent for South and Southeast Asia based in Delhi and Bangkok during the height of the war in Afghanistan. He has interviewed and portrayed comedians, ministers, presidents, writers and psychotherapists in South Asia. He curated an exhibition on Afghanistan for the ‘Fünf Kontinente’ museum in Munich and published the book ‘Augenblick Afghanistan – Angst und Sehnsucht in einem versehrten Land’.

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