However, like Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses), Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), and Henry Miller (Tropic Of Cancer), Ismat Chughtai was much more than her infamous short story. It wasn’t in fact, even representative of her style of work, which was much more introspective and descriptive of the inner workings of a woman’s mind. Unfortunately, Lihaaf does no such thing, and as Patras Bokhari, the former Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations said, “In the beginning, one thinks she will unveil Begum Jan’s psychology. Then one hopes that there will be interest in the emotions of the girl through which the story is being narrated, but away from both of these, the story adopts a very different direction in the end and fixes its gaze over an emerging quilt.” Which is perhaps why, it is so unfair to define Chughtai’s legacy, life, and literature only through the shadow cast over by Lihaaf.