Altaf Fatima (born 1927 in Lucknow, British India) was an Urdu novelist, short-story writer, and teacher (specializing in Muhammad Iqbal). Her novel Dastak Na Do ("Do not knock") is regarded as one of the defining works in the Urdu language. An adaptation was presented on Pakistan television and an abridged translation was serialised by the Karachi monthly, Herald.
Altaf Fatima was the second of four children born in a Muslim household in Lucknow, India, to Mohammad Fazle Amin and his wife Mumtaz Jahan.
She was living in Lahore, Pakistan at the end of her life, to where she had retired as a professor of Urdu, but continued her literary work.
Altaf Fatima's novel Dastak Na Do has been translated into English by Rukhsana Ahmed.
Zeenat Hisam is an independent writer-researcher and translator from Pakistan. Over the span of her career, she has written extensively on labour, gender and social development issues. She undertook evaluation of projects for a number of not-for-profit organisations working on community infrastructure development (2023), urban development (2022), women and child healthcare; women’s empowerment; women prisoners; women and crisis management in the Karachi violence; and the campaign against honour killings in the 2000s and 1990s.Her published works include a number of research reports, a couple of books, articles, book reviews, travelogues, personal essays and literary translations.
