I am deeply grieved over the sudden and entirely unexpected passing of Dr Asif Aslam Farrukhi from a silent heart attack in Karachi this afternoon. Asif had numerous prestigious jobs and degrees in medicine and public health, but his lifelong passion was literature.
My association with him goes back well before we together founded and organised the Karachi Literature Festival (2010), the Islamabad Literature Festival (2013), and the Adab Festival (2019). For decades before that, I had been publishing books authored, translated, edited, introduced, or recommended by him.
