Actress Navid Shahzad launches her first book

Pakistan’s Pride of Performance-winning actor, director and academic Navid Shahzad recently launched her maiden book, titled ‘Aslan’s Roar: Turkish Television and the Rise of the Muslim Hero’, at a coffee house in Lahore. Shahzad introduced her book to an audience comprising the city’s prominent literati, artists, and diplomats, and explained why she set out to write it in the first place. Later, she read out passages from the 400-pager.

The book, she said, was the fruit of her two-year long intensive research on “the symbiotic nature of television and culture” and “the possibility of a ‘middle way’ for Muslims positioned between a seductive modernity and tradition through a study of Turkish and Muslim identities as represented in western and nonwestern film and TV narratives.”

The book, as the title suggests, examines the Turkish television industry in detail and makes a case for the rise of a Muslim hero as a counterfoil to the prevailing dominant image of the western hero. It has already garnered critical appreciation from Arundhati Roy’s literary agent who termed it as “brilliantly written,” while poet and author Harris Khalique described it as a “remarkably insightful work on the emergence and growth of Turkish TV drama.”

The launch was attended by former Governor of Punjab Shahid Hamid; Chairperson, Alhamra Arts Council, Muneeza Hashmi; senior artist Ijaz Ul Hassan; author and historian Fakir Syed Ijazuddin; author and educationist Mira Hashmi, actors Fawad Khan and Adeel Hashmi.

An e-version of the book will shortly be available on digital platforms such as Amazon and Kindle.