When Fiction Becomes a Horrific Reality: Aatish Taseer’s ‘Noon’

We are accustomed to hearing about violence and instability in Pakistan, yet it remains a faraway place to most Americans. Yet what if Pakistan was home and its violence and uncertainty were part of the fabric of your life? And what if that violence one day claimed someone close to you? As a writer and as a Pakistani, Aatish Taseer has struggled all his life to understand his relationship with his country, with his ethnic homeland Punjab, and with his politically prominent father Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan’s Punjab province. A year ago this week his father was assassinated just as he was finishing his first novel “Noon.”   It was as though reality scripted a horrific sequel to the story he was trying to tell. One year later, Taseer sat down with The Takeaway to speak about his perspective after the loss of his father.