This is a collection of five long stories, rendered into English by the author himself, who first published it in Urdu in 2001 from Karachi, and, from Allahabad in 2003, with title, Savaar aur Doosray Afsanay (lit. The Rider and Other Stories). It is set in the 18th-19th centuries north India, specifically the region stretching from Delhi to Bihar.
When Jameel Akhtar took on the Herculean task of interviewing Qurratulain Hyder at length, her initial reaction was, ‘I don’t give interviews. I’m fed up with people. All those stupid boring questions, the same old stuff repeated over and over again, talking rot—No! No!’
For avid readers of Urdu who may not be its scholars, Urdu prose, especially,
genres such as short stories and novels mostly trigger the names of Prem Chand, Qurratulain Haider, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Rajender Singh Bedi, Krishan Chandar and the like.
The All India Progressive Writers’ Movement (AIPWM) has engendered much interest among scholars and academics. Most histories and critical estimations of Urdu literature dwell on the radicalization it brought about.
Tum Kabir (2017) is the seventh col-lection of poems of Fatima Riaz—a celebrated Progressive Urdu writer of Pakistan who challenged both the traditional form and idioms that have dominated Urdu poetry since its inception.
In his important essay, ‘The Task of the Translator’, German philosopher Walter Benjamin argues that the aim of translation is not to convey the literal meaning of the original, but rather to show how two languages are related to one another through their connection to a greater, imaginary language.