William Dalrymple on the subcontinent's new stars

Something remarkable is happening in Pakistani writing. Ten years ago, the most interesting English-language books coming out of south Asia were by Indian authors. In 1997, when The New Yorker published a photograph of hot young writers from the subcontinent, there was one Sri Lankan - Romesh Gunasekara - but all the other writers were from Indian or Indian diaspora backgrounds. There was not a single Pakistani in the group - and with good reason: in 1997 there was almost no interesting English-language writing coming out of the Islamic Republic.

A decade on, the case is very different. The Booker shortlist of 2007 contained a Pakistani writer for the first time: Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist was one of the most thought-provoking novels of that year and received deservedly fabulous reviews. Now, within a few years of Hamid's success, a raft of other Pakistani novels have appeared, causing a considerable stir in the literary world.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif, is something new in south Asian fiction: a darkly comic political thriller that is also a thought-provoking satire attacking the brutality, stupidity and hypocrisy of Pakistan's military dictators. Not surprisingly, Hanif has yet to find a Pakistani publisher. Nadeem Aslam's latest, The Wasted Vigil , set in contemporary Afghanistan, is even more observant and beautifully written than his wonderful Maps for Lost Lovers . Kamila Shamsie's Burned Shadows is a sweeping historical narrative that moves its characters from Hiroshima to 9/11, and is her strongest book to date.