Posthumous works.

Byline: Zubeida Mustafa

THE world would have been denied the richness and scholarship of some of Franz Kafka's literary work - especially The Metamorphosis - had his friend and executor, Max Brod, not decided to ignore Kafka's instruction in his will to destroy the unpublished manuscripts he left behind. Kafka died young in 1924.

Other writers have generally been pragmatic by not leaving a will. There are quite a number of them though we hardly note it. Albert Camus' A Happy Death as well as Agatha Christie's Sleeping Murder saw the light of day when the authors were no more.

Such books usually have a story behind them. Those who take the responsibility of ensuring that a work is not figuratively buried with the author not only have faith in the latter but are also erudite enough themselves to appreciate the value of the writing. One such instance is that of Naveed Ahmad Tahir who put together the incomplete memoirs of her father, Dawn's former editor-in-chief Ahmad Ali Khan, in 2014. In Search of Sense did not tell the whole story when death took away its author in 2007.

Naveed tried to leave no questions unanswered by putting together her father's copious notes and some published and unpublished material in the book which also contains some commissioned articles by family members and fellow journalists.

They had been lost to the world until they surfaced again.

Naveed describes Khan Sahib as a 'shy and self-effacing' person who was reluctant to write about himself. She managed to persuade him to embark on his autobiographical mission by suggesting that a decision about its publication could be taken later. So it was basically Naveed's own decision to publish it. She has dedicated the book to the 'young and aspiring journalists' who will definitely benefit from it. The book reflects fully Khan Sahib's ideological ethos and journalistic 'moral boundaries' that made him one of the greatest editors in Pakistan.

I have recently learnt of one more book by another Dawn colleague published posthumously that proved to be a challenge of another kind. When Shama Askari presented me with three slim volumes she has had published I was curious. Authored by Ibn-i-Said, one of them was a collection of short stories that appeared in literary magazines more than five decades ago.

In effect, they had been lost to the world until they surfaced again in 2018, thanks to Shama's efforts at playing detective. I had never heard this name till I was told that it...