Story is a Vagabond: Fiction, Essays, and Drama
by Intizar Husain

Series Editor Frank Stewart.
Guest Editors Alok Ballah, Asif Farrukhi, and Nishat Zaidi.

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 (Harper Collins, 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 2012, his novel Basti was published in English as a New York Review of Books Classics Original. In 2013, he was short-listed for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize. Listen to Sudha Bhuchar read in English from Basti.

About the guest editors: Alok Bhalla is a widely published critic, translator, and editor. His latest publications include Wild Verses of Wit and Whimsy: From Alpha to Zeta in 26 Movements, Stories about the Partition of India (four volumes), Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home, and The Place of Translation in a Literary Habitat. He has edited a volume of critical essays on Saadat Hasan Manto and translated Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug: The Age of Darkness (also published as the summer 2010 issue of MĀNOA), Intizar Husain’s A Chronicle of the Peacocks, and Nirmal Verma’s Dark Dispatches, among other books.

Asif Farrukhi is a physician by training and a well-known critic, translator, editor, and short-story writer. His recent publications include Look at the City from Here: Karachi Writings and Gender, Politics, and Performance in South Asia. His forthcoming book is on Intizar Husain. He is the editor of the literary journal Duniyazad and an organizer of the Karachi Literature Festival. He was awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award by the Pakistan Academy of Letters in 1997 and, more recently, the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan.

Nishat Zaidi is a professor in the Department of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. A scholar, critic, and translator, she is the author or translator of Agha Shahid Ali, Between Worlds: The Travels of Yusuf Kambalposh (translated with Mushirul Hasan), Pencil and Other Poems, A Voyage to Modernism: Syed Ahmed Khan (translated with Mushirul Hasan), Makhdoom Mohiuddin, and Ghalib Aur Unka Yug.

Story Is a Vagabond features images by Pakistani artist Imran Qureshi, whose work is a synthesis of contemporary abstract painting and the miniature painting that flourished during the Mughal courts.

280 pp., summer 2015 (27:1), $20
ISBN 978-0-8248-5647-2
Project Muse