“Sparrow at Heart”: How Pakistan’s First Graphic Novel Found Its Wings
If you think superheroes only come from Gotham or Wakanda, you haven’t met the ones from Karachi. Before the country had its streaming shows or viral animators, two artists decided to do something wildly unexpected: tell a Pakistani story through a graphic novel.
That’s how Sparrow at Heart came to life. Created by Zain Naqvi and Haider Ali Jan, this visually stunning book has carved out a space for storytelling that felt local, layered, and unapologetically artistic.
The Birth of a Sparrow
Released in 2016, Sparrow at Heart is often hailed as Pakistan’s first full-length graphic novel. But it’s not about a masked hero or a fictional rebellion, it’s a beautifully illustrated biography of Shakir Ali, one of Pakistan’s most important modern artists.
Naqvi and Jan, wanted to tell the story of an artist who shaped generations but rarely made it into the mainstream narrative. Published under their own creative studio Messy Squares, with support from the Lahore Literature Festival, the novel became a tribute to artistic rebellion itself. Each of its 96 pages blends storytelling and visual art, unfolding Shakir’s life from his early years in pre-Partition India to his rise as a modernist icon and principal at NCA, Lahore. His story isn’t painted in nostalgia, it’s rendered with honesty, showing both the brilliance and solitude that often accompany a creative life.
Art is Story Telling
The book’s title, Sparrow at Heart, isn’t just random. It’s borrowed from one of Shakir Ali’s recurring motifs: the sparrow, which appears across his canvases as a symbol of movement, freedom, and fragility.
Naqvi’s art mirrors Shakir’s style, bold yet contemplative, structured yet deeply emotional. The pages play with color and form, shifting from sepia-toned memories to saturated, near-surreal spreads. Some panels look like they’re breathing, lines fade, merge, and distort — as if the story itself refuses to stay still.
Before Sparrow at Heart, comics in Pakistan were largely underground, political zines, fan art, or small indie releases. Naqvi and Jan’s work changed that. It proved that the graphic novel format could handle serious, introspective storytelling and that it could be both literary and visual without losing its accessibility.
This wasn’t a Marvel comic — it was something more grounded, more local, more us.
Let it Fly
Nearly a decade later, Sparrow at Heart continues to inspire young illustrators and storytellers in Pakistan. It wasn’t just a book, it was a blueprint. It showed that you can talk about identity, art, and history without sounding preachy; you can make something deeply Pakistani without needing to explain yourself to the world. In the end, that’s what makes Sparrow at Heart timeless. It’s a reminder that the art of storytelling, visual or otherwise, is, and always will be, a little bit like that sparrow: small, brave, and wildly free.
