Ismat Chughtai
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This selection from Ismat Chughtai's prose writing, comprising essays, commentaries and pen-portraits of her contemporaries, gives the reader a good idea of the artistic, political and social mores of her times. It also serves as a background to her own work and furnishes insights into the art and lives of her contemporaries. Chughtai's involvement with the Progressive Writers' Association and her friendship with writers like Sa'dat Hasan Manto, Patras Bokhari, ...
The four novellas in this volume span the inimitable Ismat Chughtai’s literary career, from 1939 to 1971. Each one develops the author’s central preoccupation with the lives of women as they experience love, tragedy, societal prescriptions and proscriptions, in collision with their own rebellious spirit. A keen sense of their individual subversive potential and a willingness to take the consequences of obduracy in the face of overwhelming odds, ...
A Life in Words, the first complete translation of her celebrated memoir Kaghazi hai Pairahan, provides an authentic and delightful account of several crucial years of Ismat’s life. Presented along with the vivid and high-energy descriptions of her childhood years are the conflicted experiences of growing up in a large Muslim family during the early decades of the twentieth century. We get an intimate view of a writer’s fierce struggle to find her own ...
This novel, set in the Bombay Film World of the 1940s and 50s, is the riveting story of Dharam Dev, the famous actor, director and producer, and his all-consuming and doomed passion for Zarina Jamal, the young dancer from Madras whom he brings to Bombay and transforms into a great actress. He looks on in anguish as his betrayed wife, Mangala, a well-known playback singer, sinks slowly into alcoholism. When Zarina abandons him, he is overwrought and dies of an ...
This selection, now available in paperback edition, from Ismat Chughtai’s prose writing comprising essays, commentaries, reminiscences, and pen- portraits of her well-known contemporaries, gives the reader a good idea of the artistic, political and social mores of her times. Ismat Chugtai established herself as a stalwart of Urdu fiction when writing by and about women was both rare and tentative. This volume serves both as a background to her own work and ...
The twenty one pieces in this selection are Chughtai at her best, marked by her brilliant turn of phrase, scintillating dialogue and wry humor. This evocative collection brings together Chughtai's fiction and non-fiction writing resplendent with her characteristic irreverence, wit and eye for detail. 'Gainda' and 'The Net' deal with sexual awakening and role playing, and 'The Wedding Suit' has to do with a daughter's marriage. 'The Quilt' lends itself to feminist ...