We start the month of July with another guest editor, amplifying a genre that is read by a huge audience yet perhaps looked down upon in ‘literary circles’ as too accessible—popular literature.
Yet anyone with arguably any connection to words cannot underestimate the enormous reach that popular literature has for a vast audience of readers. Whether we are talking of Romance, Horror, Thriller or similar types of reading, popular literature informs the thoughts and imaginations of its audience with enviable immediacy and gratification.
The Aleph Review is lucky to have Dr Javaria Farooqui present us with four pieces on, and examples of, the subject—the first, an essay esquissing her own thoughts. She will also select four archive pieces from our back issues.
Dr Javaria Farooqui has a PhD in popular culture from the University of Tasmania (Australia), and works as an assistant professor at COMSATS University, Lahore. The love of her research life is popular romance fiction. She has written scholarly articles on women's digest fiction and Jane Austen's legacy in the reading cultures of Pakistan. In her recent write-ups for Dawn Images, she has talked about the nuanced reception of the television series Bridgerton by the Lahori audience, as well as about horror shows on national television.
Mehvash Amin