A brilliant writer whose tales seem spun from the lush threads of a narrative magic carpet.
-- Elle
Masud is eminently successful in bringing a sense of vivid reality to his abstract vision of a life which is no more.
-- Safdir Mir, Dawn
One may turn to Masud for a genuine sense of tragedy which is also vigorous and enlightening.
-- Muzaffar Ali Syed, The Friday Times
The most extraordinary fictional voice to have emerged in world literature this decade.
-- Amit Chaudhuri, author of Freedom Song
Essence of Camphor
hardcover
$21.00
Hauntingly beautiful short stories with strong affinities to Kafka and Borges, by one of the most original voices to emerge from India.
A skillful mix of otherworldly imitations and psychological pungency....[M]esmerizes.
-- Boston Globe
Indian author Naiyer Masud has long been hailed as a leading writer in his native Lucknow, where he has won several prestigious literary awards. Now seven of Masud's most highly regarded stories have been translated from Urdu for the first time, introducing to a wider audience the work of a master of the short story and opening a window on an exciting literary tradition. In spare, abstract language reminiscent of Kafka and Borges, Masud creates a lush landscape of dreams and disillusion. A parfumier mixes memory with desire to recall the older girl who influenced his destiny. A dispossessed boy learns difficult lessons of love and its transparencies from a young girl who has never set foot on land. A man escapes his incestuous longings to become a building inspector with the unusual ability to detect in houses their obscure realms of fear and desire. Masud's "irreducibly authentic" (Safdir Mir, Dawn) and "enlightening" (Muzaffar Ali Syed, The Friday Times) work reflects his careful ear for the strange and uneven rhythms beneath a highly routinized everydayness, which lend these stories their mystical yet deeply human tone.
Naiyer Masud is a retired professor of Persian at Lucknow University in India.
Muhammad Umar Memon, translator, is a professor of Islamic Studies and of Urdu at the University of Wisconsin, and writes fiction and criticism in both Urdu and English.
Spring 2000
hardcover
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 192 pages
978-1-56584-583-1
hardcover
5 1/2 x 8 1/4, 192 pages
978-1-56584-583-1
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