ABSTRACT

The discourse of romance has become synonymous with popular, mass-media culture in Pakistan and shaped its many diverse forms, from iconic television drama serials to novels that are part of a wider literary history. This chapter explores how the genre of romance can potentially serve as a site in which Pakistani women writers refashion and reconfigure their role in their country’s nationalist imaginary. Nationalism and its ideologies are clearly important to these writers and I am concerned with the way they respond to its challenges and the subsequent implications this has for gendered agency.