The Qurratulain Hyder we have all read voraciously is hailed as one of Urdu's greatest writers. But while her great novels enjoy a wide, bilingual readership, her expansive body of untranslated non-fiction, especially her critical commentary, reportage, pen portraits and interviews, have remained inaccessible to the Anglophone world.
At Home in India is an exceptional anthology of Hyder's non-fiction and fiction writing, here, in translation for the first time, are essays from her multi-volume, magisterial autobiography, Kar-e Jahan Daraz Hai, in which real people, eminent personalities, and landmark events, together, narrate the grand story of an illustrious family and a subcontinent-grappling with Partition and its aftermath.
In addition, this book offers newly translated short stories; charming sketches of prominent women, like Hyder's writer-mentors, Rashid Jahan and Anis Kidwai, and the film icon, Nargis; as well as rare, candid conversations with the author, on literature and life.
Set in four parts-stories, memoirs, portraits and interviews this collection presents Hyder at her sophisticated, poetic and poignant best.
QURRATULAIN HYDER is one of the leading writers of Urdu in India. Her published work consists of four collections of short stories; five novels, including the classics, River of Fire and Fireflies in the Mist, and several novellas. She has been a journalist, scriptwriter and broadcaster with the BBC, as well as Producer Emeritus, All India Radio, and copywriter for an advertising agency. Among her many awards and honours are the Padma Shri, the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Bharatiya Jnanpith, and the Padma Bhushan.
FATIMA RIZVI is a Professor in the Department of English and Modern European Languages at the University of Lucknow. She has translated Qurratulain Hyder's Beyond the Stars & Other Stories, and co-edited Understanding Disability: Interdisciplinary Critical Approaches. She was awarded the Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize in 2018 and the Jawad Memorial Prize in 2019.
SUFIA KIDWAI taught English at Christ Church College, Lucknow. She has translated Mirza Jafar Hussain's Lucknow ka Dastarkhwan as The Classic Cuisine of Lucknow: a Food Memoir, and edited and contributed to the anthology, Lucknowi Bawarchi Khane: Food from Lucknow Homes.
Qurratulain Hyder (1927-2007) is one of Urdu literature's leading writers and its first to be honoured with the Jnanpith Award in 1989. Many more honours were conferred upon her, before and after. Her inimitable style, the vast sweep of her works, the sheer depth of her understanding, and the extensive repertoire of her knowledge, make of her oeuvre a substantial and significant offering. It is not without reason that she stands tall among world writers like Milan Kundera, Gabriel García Márquez and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
Hyder was born in Aligarh to parents of significant literary repute. Her father, Sajjad Haider Yildirim (1880-1943), registrar of Aligarh Muslim University when she was born, was a poet, critic, essayist and playwright, and a popular and prolific short story writer. A dragoman, he also translated and adapted from Central Asian languages, particularly Turkish, in concurrence with expedient and modern trends, with a view to modernising his readership. Well-known for his appreciation of the Turkish leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, he sought to emancipate fellow Muslims in his own country by encouraging them to do away with moribund traditions and customs. His writings helped pave the way for the modern Urdu story. He also enjoyed a distinguished career as a civil servant. Hyder shared a special bond with him. Her mother, Nazar Sajjad Haider (1892-1967) was also a novelist and short story writer of high standing. Prior to her marriage, as a young woman, she contributed articles and stories regularly to well-known Urdu literary magazines of her time. Liberal and modern, she played the sitar and learnt music from resident ustads. She championed women's causes and actively worked for reform, particularly Muslim women's reform. She was honorary editor of Phool, the children's magazine published from Lahore, while still in parda, a practice she gave up in 1920. Her novels had educated and independent women as protagonists. She was a non-cooperator, and even wrote a novel, Janbaz (1922, Braveheart) to promote the cause of non-cooperation and indigenous production. Her daughter valued her modernity, extolled it every now and again, and saw herself as the child of an emancipated and modern woman.
In more ways than one Qurratulain Hyder was far ahead of her times. Her western education, the spirit of learning she was imbued with, coupled with the culturally liberal atmosphere at home, encouraged her to perfect her talent in art, music and literature. The company of a multiethnic circle of friends who shared deep and lasting ties with the family, and a strong sense of self-esteem, together fostered a spirit of individualism that enabled her sustained engagement with and experimentation in literary pursuits that were soon recognised for their originality and brilliance. Her earliest stories and novels are proof of the fact that she was abreast with contemporary literary trends in the west, while cogently assessing the Urdu literary scene within which she was writing. She sought out her own path, but drew inspiration from the resplendent Indo-Muslim and Persian literary and philosophical heritage within which she grew up. Hyder carved out a niche for herself that established her as a writer with an expansive canvas and a philosophy inspired by a blending of both, indigenous and western cultural and ideological precepts.
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