My Top 10: Literary Influences

by Laaleen Sukhera 

“I MAY have been educated in Pakistan and USA, but my head’s always been buried in well-loved British classics. Even my Netflix queue tends to vary from Poldark to Bridget Jones’s Baby and everything in between. Austenistan, (my fiction debut with a group of brilliant contributors), follows brown Jane Austen-esque heroines of vary­ing ages navigating the social jungles of La­hore, Karachi and Islamabad, with the will to make their own choices, modern and relatable, yet echoing Regency era social conventions. Bloomsbury is set to publish our anthology in Britain this May. Here are the tremendous 10 to whom this Aus­tenistani owes a great deal,” said Laaleen.  

The greatest novelist: I’ve adored Jane Aus­ten since I first read Pride and Prejudice at 12. Lizzie Bennet channels humour in the best possible way, something that resonates at the darkest of times: “Follies and non­sense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.” Austen’s even influenced my mascu­line ideal, though I admit that I didn’t actu­ally start fawning over Fitzwilliam Darcy until Colin Firth’s dishy depiction. From an honours thesis at university to the Jane Aus­ten Society of Pakistan to Austenistan, Jane has inspired me a great deal over the years and she probably always will.  

A magical childhood: With the exception of her racist depictions of golliwogs, Enid Blyton greatly fuelled my imagination as a child. Whether it was Mallory Towers, The Faraway Tree or The Five Find-Outers, her pages enticed me to an obsessive level of reading at the table, in the car, and even at some lacklustre birthday parties.  

A family who reads together: I was fortu­nate enough to grow up with an early ap­preciation for fiction and the joy of writ­ing. I owe this to my dad Sarwar Sukhera, publisher and Benazir Bhutto’s first press secretary. He encouraged written expres­sion, while my sister Mahlia Lone, the writer of The Fabulous Banker Boys in Aus­tenistan, always had the most exciting ar­ray of books that I devoured growing up.  

The queen of crime: I discovered Agatha Christie at 10 and my fascination for her plots has never ended. By the time I turned 12, I’d read 76 of her books, with a marked preference for Hercule Poirot and his OCD genius, followed by Miss Marple’s detec­tions in idyllic St Mary Mead and Tommy and Tuppence’s many capers.  

The riveting Regency: My sister and I discovered Georgette Heyer when I was 13. Not only did Heyer portray the glam­our of the Regency era with her unique brand of lingo and endearing fictional characters (spirited ladies, dashing Corin­thians and rakes), but also interspersed her stories with glittering, eccentric, actu­al personages. These included Prinny (the Prince Regent, later George IV), Beau Brummel, Lady Sarah Jersey, Golden Ball (Lord Alvanley). And she depicted hap­pening haunts like Almack’s, Gunter’s, White’s and Vauxhall Gardens.  

High-spirited historians: From Amanda Foreman’s Georgiana: The Duchess of Devon­shire to Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats and Wil­liam Dalrymple’s White Mughals, there’s nothing like meticulous research, captivating archives and mind-bogglingly detailed histories that bring favourite eras and fas­cinating characters to life centuries later.  

Commercial fiction: Helen Fielding’s bumbling, boisterous Bridget Jones is the bestie we all want and whom we’ll always root for. Whether you call it popular fic­tion or demean it as ‘chick lit’, it’s fun, fab­ulous and here to stay.  

Edwardians & Flappers: Characters I’ve turned to during childhood and adult­hood to suit every mood include whimsi­cal Wodehousian man-about-town Bertie Wooster and his unfailing propensity for entanglement while singing awful show tunes (pure applesauce for the soul). Then there’s the wistful romance of EM Forster’s sublime A Room With A View, complete with Lucy Honeychurch’s com­ing-of-age snog in a field of lavender in Tuscany, no less.  

Victorian refinement: From irresistibly heated Brontërific exchanges on York­shire moors to restrained Whartonesque romance across the pond in Wharton’s Old New York ballrooms, corseted Victo­rian fiction has a lasting appeal of its own.  

Screen adaptations: Whether it’s Austen, Dickens, Eliot, Gaskell, Thackeray or Tol­stoy, screenwriters like Andrew Davies have a knack for adapting enduring fic­tion into compelling period dramas and creating a visual world of sensory and aesthetic splendour. Sigh!  

•  Laaleen Sukhera is the editor and contribu­tor of Austenistan, forthcoming from Blooms­bury Publishing UK in May 2018. Visit www. Laaleen.com and follow her on Twitter: @ laaleen & Instagram: @laaleen_official