Fiction in Times of Despair: Seeking Context, Meaning & Hope through Storytelling

In times marked by conflict, censorship, and uncertainty, what can fiction do? This conversation explores how storytelling helps us make sense of our world – how it provides context when news fails, meaning when reality feels fragmented, and hope when despair seems inevitable. From dystopian classics to contemporary Urdu fiction, we ask: can stories still save us? ● About the Guest Speaker: » Dr. Osama Siddique is a legal scholar, policy reform expert, and novelist writing in English and Urdu. A Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and graduate of Harvard Law School (LLM, SJD), he was the inaugural Henry J. Steiner Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Harvard and serves on the senior faculty of Harvard's Institute of Global Law and Policy (IGLP). He also holds an MBA from LUMS and is a recipient of the Pride of LUMS Award. He is the author of The Jurisprudence of Dissolutions, Pakistan’s Experience with Formal Law: An Alien Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2013) - winner of Best Non-Fiction Book at Karachi Literature Festival 2014 and the AIPS Book Prize - and the novels Snuffing Out the Moon (Penguin Random House, 2017), Ghuroob-e-Shehr Ka Waqt (2023), and Who Knows the Bounds of Desire (2025). His novels have been translated into Urdu and French. He is Founder and Executive Director of the Law and Policy Research Network (LPRN), Associate Fellow at Institute for Development & Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), and Chief Executive of Avante Development Services. ● About the Moderator: » Mehran Memon is a PhD scholar and Research Associate at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and Lecturer in Literature at Fatima Jinnah Women University.