Lifting The Veil(Mod Class) - Softcover

Chughtai, Ismat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143430718 ISBN 13: 9780143430711

Publisher: Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

At a time when writing by and about women was rare and tentative, Chughtai explored female sexuality with unparalleled frankness and examined the political and social mores of her time. She wrote about the world that she knew, bringing the idiom of the middle class to Urdu prose, and totally transformed the complexion of Urdu fiction. Lifting the Veil brings together Ismat Chughtai's fiction and non-fiction writing. The twenty-one pieces in this selection are Chughtai at her best, marked by her brilliant turn of phrase, scintillating dialogue and wry humor, her characteristic irreverence, wit and eye for detail.

About this title

Review

Enlightened, bold, iconoclastic, progressive and feminist... Chughtai's style makes reading a delight (Dawn)

One of the foremost Urdu writers of the 20th century, Ismat Chughtai is known for her iconoclastic, feminist writings which explored the inner workings of women's lives (Huffington Post)

Her marvellous skill with language and storytelling has resulted in the creation of some of the most powerful women characters in world literature (The Hindu)

Gloriously provocative... female sexuality within a patriarchal world is Chughtai's central concern (Kamila Shamsie, from the introduction)

Chughtai's prose is supple, energetic, argumentative, funny, caustic, and colloquial. But what really distinguishes her from her peers is a bluntness that is often brutal, and a sarcasm that is always biting. This is high-voltage writing, it can be as vituperative as it is incisive, as polemical as it is profound. (India Today)

Ismat Chughtai's work had a seminal impact on me... [her] rebellious life I carry about with me like a talisman (Kishwar Desai, author of 'Origins of Love')

A writer who was constantly challenging accepted notions of morality and urging her readers to examine a woman's place in society (Indian Express)

From the Back Cover

THE PENGUIN WOMEN WRITERS SERIES CELEBRATES THE CENTENARY OF WOMEN GETTING THE VOTE IN BRITAIN IN 1918.

'Gloriously provocative... female sexuality within a patriarchal world is Chughtai's central concern' Kamila Shamsie, from the introduction

Lifting the Veil is a bold and irreverent collection of writing from India's most controversial feminist writer. These stories celebrate life in all its complexities: from a woman who refuses marriage to a man she loves to preserve her freedom, to a Hindu and a Muslim teenager pulled apart by societal pressures, to eye-opening personal accounts of the charges of obscenity the author faced in court for stories found in this book.

Wickedly funny and unflinchingly honest, Lifting the Veil explores the power of female sexuality while slyly mocking the subtle tyrannies of middle-class life. In 1940s India, an unlikely setting for female rebellion, Ismat Chughtai was a rare and radical storyteller born years ahead of her time.

'Ismat Chughtai is known for her iconoclastic, feminist writings which explored the inner workings of women's lives' Huffington Post
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Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Random House India Pvt. Ltd
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143430718
• ISBN 13: 9780143430711
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288