In the short story collection, In other Rooms, Other Wonders, author Daniyal Mueenuddin depicts a region in Pakistan controlled by a man named K.K. Haurouni. This fictional character weaves his way into all of the stories in the collection, and the stories feel timeless even though most are set in the 1970s. With the understanding that Pakistan was a nation created in August of 1947 as a result of a massive and chaotic border negotiation between a variety of Indian and British groups which led to millions of deaths and millions more displaced, the short story collection focuses on the everyday lives of everyday people.

Students needed to accomplish four things in their short story collections:

Utilize detailed and rich description. Mueenuddin writes lively and gripping descriptions of settings and people, and students needed to attempt that in their stories.
Try to incorporate one of the main themes we see from the collection: love, power, choices and their repercussions, class, social mobility, sexuality.
Utilize alternate points of view. For example, tell one story in first person, the other story in second person, and the last in omniscient third person.
Be sure that all the stories have at least one thread that ties them together. Will it be a character, a place, an object, a theme…?

Please enjoy our short stories!