‘Humans are always fascinated by what they don’t have’

Haroon Khalid Akhtar is a Karachi-based novelist who won the UBL Best Debut Fiction Award 2020 for his debut novel, Melody of a Tear. He has also authored an anthology called Threadbare. In this exclusive interview with The News on Sunday, Akhtar discusses the inspiration behind the Melody of A Tear. He also laments that Pakistani literature in English has somewhat limited scope for magic realism, something that he tries to address in his latest novel, The Liar’s Truth.