Story Is a Vagabond: Selected Essays, Fiction, and Drama

Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

by Intizar Husain, Frank Stewart (Editor), Alok Ballah (Editor)

One of Pakistan's most distinguished writers, Intizar Husain was born in India in 1923 and immigrated to Pakistan during the Partition. An internationally acclaimed writer, critic, and translator, he has published seven volumes of short stories, four novels, and a novella, as well as travelogues, memoirs, and critical essays. Despite his importance to world literature for over six decades, Husain's writing is little known in English translation. Story Is a Vagabond is the first collection in English to show the breadth of his thoughtful, innovative, and compassionate work.

Intizar Husain's numerous honors include the Yatra Award (HarperCollins, India), Pride of Performance (Government of Pakistan), Kamal-i-Fun Award (Government of Pakistan), Adabi Award (Anjuman-i-Farogh-i-Urdu, India), ARY Gold Award, Pakistan's Sitara-e-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lahore Literary Festival, and France's Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2013, he was short-listed for the prestigious Man Book Prize in Fiction.

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Intizar Husain (1925–2016) was a journalist, short-story writer, and novelist, widely considered one of the most significant fiction writers in Urdu. Born in Dibai, Bulandshahr, in British-administered India, he migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and lived in Lahore. Besides Basti, he was 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.

Reviews

[Noor ul Ain · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars only because it has, especially the essays, lost something in the translation...I wish I would find this exact collection in Urdu to read.