Growing up in Lahore in the mid-1980s, I became accustomed to the sight of young women buying Anglophone romance novels from Old Bookshops and street book vendors. Surprisingly, there is no extant scholarship on the importation and circulation of Anglophone fiction in the country, which indicates gaps in understanding about the transnational retail of genre fiction. This essay consists of my survey of the venues and conventions of the retail of popular Anglophone novels to picture the socioeconomic environment that shapes the reading communities in Pakistan. Mapping the retail landscape of Anglophone romance novels is necessary for studying the culture of reading English fiction in Pakistan because in the absence of a developed library system, buying a book is almost the only option available to the readers. Although, some elite private colleges have a few copies of Anglophone genre romance, there is no concept of lending books from a public or community library because they are usually not functional. The readers of Anglophone romance fiction in Pakistan mostly buy the books or borrow them from the Old Book Shops in their neighbourhoods. (66)
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