Review of the Book “ The Dual City, Karachi during the Raj” by Yasmin Lari & Mihail Lari

I had the good fortune of reading this excellent book this past month. I happened to stumble across this fantastic publication by the Oxford University Press in 1996 in the AKU Library.

Here’s what I loved about this book. It’s excellently written. It reads like a story while being completely based in fact and research. The research is extremely thorough. The author, especially Dr. Yasmin Lari, is a highly respected name in Pakistan’s civily society, and after reading this book by her and her son, it becomes quite clear why that is so.

In the course of writing this book, the authors reviewed texts, maps, and written records in Pakistan and in the UK since Karachi has had a strong colonial past.

This book delves into the technical matters of architecture but also does a quick dive into history as well. It zooms into matters of Karachi and zooms out to explain what was happening in those times in the subcontinent as well. Sometimes the book zooms out all the way to what was happening globally.

I learnt a lot through this book. I feel like after reading this book I have a detailed understanding of how the nature of Karachi evolved over the past 200 years until 1947. This holds a special place in my heart since my paternal side of the family moved to this city from Gujrat in the 1850–60s and through this book I got a chance to learn about the experiences and the lives of my ancestors.

If I try to give you specific facts about the book I would sadly fall short of describing how great it is. I just wanted to write this note to capture my joy of finishing it and if you ever want to learn about the special city of Karachi especially the pre partition time of it, I would highly recommend a read of it.

Just want to close with a note of thanks to Dr. Yasmin Lari and Mihail for their excellent work. It was clearly a labour of love and thanks to their effort this history of Karachi would become immortalized in this fantastic piece of non-fiction writing. Thank you.