Book Details

Description

This selection of poetry and prose by Ghalib provides an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the preeminent Urdu poet of the nineteenth century. Ghalib's poems, especially his ghazals, remain beloved throughout South Asia for their arresting intelligence and lively wit. His letters―informal, humorous, and deeply personal―reveal the vigor of his prose style and the warmth of his friendships. These careful translations allow readers with little or no knowledge of Urdu to appreciate the wide range of Ghalib's poetry, from his gift for extreme simplicity to his taste for unresolvable complexities of structure.

 Frances W. Pritchett is professor emerita of modern indic languages at Columbia University.Her books include nets of awareness: Urdu Poetry and its critics(1994). The Romance tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah(1991),and Ab-ehayat: Shaping the canon of urdu poetry(2001),translated, edited, and introduced with S.S.Faruqi.Owen T. A. Cornwall is a visiting lecturer at Columbia University in the Department of middle eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, He is Currently working on a book manuscript about Alexander and the Per-modern Persian literary tradition.