Basti - Hardcover

Husain, Intizar

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195691628 ISBN 13: 9780195691627

Publisher: OUP India, 2007

Synopsis

Written in 1979, Basti is considered as one of the finest works on the theme of partition. Intizar Husain offers deep insights into the psychological and emotional aspects of the 'historic' event's impact on human lives through the emotional journey of Zakir, the main protagonist of the novel. In an interview published alongside, the author looks at partition in contemporary sense.

About this title

Review

'At its best Basti is deftly written and transalated ... one can see why Husain is regarded as one of Pakistain's finest writers and is nominated for this year's man Booker International Prize.'

(Times Literary Supplement)

'sensuous reworking of vernacular modes, and his intricate metaphysics, are effectively deployed in his novel.  This trademark use of what might crudely be termed magic realism adds not just a dimension of timelessness and universality, but also a subversive exoticism that foreign readers might find seductive long after the topicality of contemporary fiction from Pakistan recedes.'

(The Independent)

About the Author

INTIZAR HUSAIN (b. 1925) is a journalist, short-story writer, and novelist, widely considered the most significant living fiction writer in Urdu. Born in Dibai, Bulandshahr, in British-administered India, he migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and currently lives in Lahore. Besides Basti, he is the author of two other novels, Naya Gar (The New House), which paints a picture of Pakistan during the ten-year dictatorship of the Islamic fundamentalist General Zia-ul-Haq, and Agay Sumandar Hai (Beyond Is the Sea), which juxtaposes the spiraling urban violence of contemporary Karachi with a vision of the lost Islamic realm of al-Andalus. Collections of Husain’s celebrated short stories have appeared in English under the titles Leaves, The Seventh Door, A Chronicle of the Peacocks, and An Unwritten Epic.
FRANCES W. PRITCHETT has taught South Asian literature at Columbia University since 1982. Her books include Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics, The Romance Tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah, and (with Khaliq Ahmad Khaliq) Urdu Meter: A Practical Handbook.
ASIF FARRUKHI is a writer and a physician trained in public health. He is a frequent contributor to the English-language press of Pakistan and the author of seven short-story collections, two essay collections, and a monograph on Intizar Husain. He is the editor of Fires in an Autumn Garden: Stories from Pakistan, Look at the City from Here: Writings About Karachi, and co-editor of Faultlines, a selection of stories about the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war, and has collaborated with Intizar Husain on the anthology Short Stories from Pakistan.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP India
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195691628
• ISBN 13: 9780195691627
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294