The first novel in Pakistan was Qurratulain Heider’s Aag ka Darya (The River of Fire, 1957). According to Gilani Kamran in his article Pakistani Literature –Evolution and Trends, “Prose fiction had, indeed, become the leading mode of writing in Urdu literature after Independence. It portrayed what could not be told in poetry, though it had been poetry that was the effective form of expression in Urdu literature before 1947.