‘Studies in [] Dying Culture[s]’

Qurratulain Hyder is an experimental writer who explores various genres of fiction ranging from the high-brow to horror or gothic fiction, science fiction, and suspense thrillers, covering a number of themes from the pragmatic to the implausible. With an avid interest in history, she felt concerned about what became of ancient cultures. The multi-cultural environment in which she lived was also integral to Hyder’s convictions. In the few fantastical stories she has written, Hyder engages the reader by centring ancient cultures, exploring history, mythologies, and folk-lore. She delves into the fantastic, the paranormal, the strange, or the improbable and the bizarre by means of play on time and space. She foregrounds the past, with an eye ever focused on the normative. In these stories, removed from reality, she recreates a magical charm characteristic of a romantic perception of bygone eras. This chapter analyses select fantasies as willing suspension of disbelief, their serious end being representation of ancient cultures, their association with the real or the normative, and their hybrid sensibility.