Landscapes of Loss: Ecocritical Reflections on Munazza Yaqoob’s A Lament for the Peach Orchard

Abstract

Contemporary Pakistani anglophone fiction as seen in Munazza Yaqoob’s recent collection of short stories “A Lament for the Peach Orchard” grapples with the psychological and ecological impacts of rapid urbanization and the consequential environmental crisis. This paper argues that Yaqoob’s stories articulate a profound sense of loss and alienation that arise when familiar landscapes are altered or destroyed, reinforcing the idea that environmental harm is intertwined with human suffering. The primary arc of the paper is the progression from psychological distress of “solastalgia” through the political and ethical commitment as a necessary pathway to the envisioned “symbiocene”. This paper draws upon Glenn Albrecht's concept of soliphilia to analyse how the narrator navigates a landscape marked by decline due to human exploitation, with a sense of solastalgia – the pain of losing one’s home environment while still inhabiting it. Yaqoob’s exploration of “eco-anxiety” highlights the fear and dread surrounding an unstable future, illustrating the existential unease over the on-going collapse of the natural world. This anxiety is a critical progression from paralysis of solastalgic grief towards a politically engaged “soliphilia”. Furthermore, Yaqoob’s fiction portrays nature as an active, sentient entity as theorized by Donna Haraway and Jane Bennet who ascertain that nature is an active participant in human lives and that humans must recognize its suffering and agency. Yaqoob’s narratives, this study argues, challenge capitalistic anthropocentric perspectives and advocate for a reimagined, empathetic coexistence between humans and nature. Henceforth Yaqoob's fiction is not merely an elegy but a vital call for a restorative, symbiotic ethics in a postcolonial context.