A Slice of Urban World
Naved Farooqui
INSTANT CITY: LIFE AND DEATH IN KARACHI by Steve Inskeep Penguin Books, 2013, 284 pp., 599
February 2013, volume 37, No 2-3

A city is not an onion that can be unpeeled to reveal its layers. It is a breathing organism shaped by the ideologies that create it.

Karachi is one such city or as the author would have us believe—‘the’ instant city. Steve Inskeep, a journalist for National Public Radio in the US attempts to chronicle and comprehend Karachi in his book under review. Out on a quest, he has set out ‘to learn the events of the day, the history that led up to it and the aftershocks and consequences that followed’. Briefly put, for Inskeep an instant city is one which has grown manifold from the WWII era and this growth is largely due to the migration that these cities have seen.

The book is not about Karachi. It is about the Ashura bombing, Korangi, Edhi ambulance service and the political set up of the present-day Pakistan, and a few other narratives.

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