|
| Tahira Naqvi,
Maniza Naqvi (no relation) and Sabrina Saleem at a panel in New York.
Photo by Jeet Thayil &
India Abroad. |
Raised and educated in Lahore, Pakistan, Tahira Naqvi is now settled
in the
United States. She has been teaching English for nearly fifteen years
and
has also taught Urdu at NYU and Columbia. Her short stories have been
widely
anthologized and she has published two collections of short
fiction. She
is working on her first novel.
Also a translator of Urdu fiction and prose, Tahira has translated
Ismat
Chughtai's short stories, published as The Quilt and Other Stories,
two
novellas titled The Heart Breaks Free, Chughtai's novel, titled The
Crooked
Line in English, and recently Chughtai's essays under the title, My
Friend,
My Enemy, the anthology expected to be available in December 2000. In
addition, Tahira has translated a collection of short fiction
(published as
Cool, Sweet Water), by Khadija Mastur, a well-known Pakistani writer.
Her
translations of Saadat Hasan Manto's stories appeared in 1983.
Currently she
is completing a collection of works by Hajira Masroor, another writer
of Urdu
fiction from Pakistan.
- About Tahira Naqvi
- Interview
by Gayatri Devi in Monsoon magazine.
- Muslim
writers discuss challenges of life in America. The companion piece
to the photograph above, by Jeet Thayil in India Abroad.
- Giving
Urdu an English audience. Prof. M.U. Memon on translating Urdu for
a wider audience, in zameen.com
- Review of
Living in America by Sudha Sundaresh. A collection of poetry and
fiction by South Asian American writers, the book includes a story by
Tahira Naqvi.
- Online work by Naqvi
- The
Good Wife, a short story in Monsoon magazine.
- Lost
in the Marketplace. A short story in Weber Studies.
- About Attar of Roses
-
Excerpt from Bapsi Sidhwa's review in Journal of Asian Studies,
Vol 58:1.
I was asked last year by the members of a reading group in
Massachusetts,
"Why is it every time we read a story with a Muslim setting it
sensationalizes some dreadful aspect of culture . . . Isn't there any
fiction
about ordinary, day-to-day life in a Muslim setting?"
Of course there is, but little that I know in English. Western
publishers favor the sensational. I suggested Sara Suleri's magical
memoir
MEATLESS DAYS . . . I can also now recommend Tahira Naqvi's ATTAR OF
ROSES
AND OTHER STORIES OF PAKISTAN. This collection . . . devoid of
stylistic
pretension, is refreshing and honest in its depiction . . . Tahira
Naqvi
[who] purports to write from memory, has a very good memory indeed,
and an
eye for the accumulation of detail that brings the characters (mostly
women)
and the environment they inhabit, to life . . . In her quiet way
Tahira Naqvi
sustains a tension and suspense that make many of her stories
compulsively
readable.
- Bibliography
- Attar of Roses and other stories from Pakistan. Lynne
Riener Press, 1998.
- Dying in a Strange Country. TSAR Press, 2001.
The linked stories in this collection have a life in the Pakistani
community of North America. Set primarily among a large extended
family from a
beloved Lahore, at the center of which is the young and sensitive
Connecticut
housewife Zenab, the several voices of the stories all converge upon
the shaky,
though no less exciting and wonderful world of the immigrant. That
world is
evolving, at times amid protests; as when an aged aunt asks of a
suitor,
'But is he circumcised?'; and at times in surprising ways, but
always
relentlessly. Guilt walks hand in hand with nostalgia, the desire to
stay never
completely overcomes that longing to return. But ultimately, as Zenab
says, 'All
is not lost, is it?'
- My Friend, My Enemy: A Prose Anthology, by Ismat
Chughtai. Translated by Tahira Naqvi. Kali for Women Press, New Delhi,
India. 2001.
- Another Lonely Voice: The Life and Works of Saadat Hasan
Manto. Translated by Tahira Naqvi. Introduction by Leslie
Fleming. Vanguard books, Lahore, Pakistan. 1985.
- The Quilt and Other Stories by Ismat Chughtai. Translated
by Tahira Naqvi. Kali for Women Press, New Delhi, India. 1990.
- Cool, Sweet Water, by Khadija Mastur. Translated by Tahira
Naqvi. Oxford University Press, Pakistan. 1999.
- The Heart Breaks Free & The Wild One. Two novellas by
Ismat Chughtai, translated by Tahira Naqvi. Kali for Women Press,
New Delhi, 1993.
- The Crooked Line (Terhi Lakir). A novel by Ismat Chugtai,
translated by Tahira Naqvi. Kali for Women Press, New Delhi, 1995.
Also published by Heinemann International Press, UK, 1995.
Bibliography
- Dying in a strange country
TSAR Books, 2001.
-
- Sawnet Review by Pratibha Ghogale-Kelapure
- Attar of Roses and other stories of Pakistan
Lynne Rienner Press, CO, 1987.
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