Intizar Hussain

1) His Biography:

Intizar Hussain (December 1925 – February 2, 2016) was a Pakistani novelist, short story writer, poet, and nonfiction writer who wrote in Urdu. He is usually regarded as Pakistan’s foremost literary personality. In 2013, he was one of the Man Booker Prize contenders. As someone who was born in the Indian Subcontinent and subsequently relocated to Pakistan following the 1947 Partition, a recurring topic in Hussain’s writings is nostalgia for his pre-partition existence.

Intizar Hussain was born in British India in 1925 in Dibai, Bulandshahr, and moved to Pakistan in 1947. Although his actual date of birth is unknown, reports claim he was born on December 21, 1922, 1923, or 1925. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Urdu literature from Meerut College in 1944 and 1946, respectively, after clearing the Intermediate Examination (high school equivalent in the United States) in 1942. Aliya Begum, Hussain’s wife, died in 2004. They didn’t have any children.

Hussain created five novels and seven collections of short stories during the course of his literary career, which spanned an age. He worked for Imroze and the daily Mashriq, and he also wrote to the Daily Express and Dawn until his death. His writing style was journalistic and his language was straightforward. Hussain’s knowledge of Indian mythology was unrivalled, and his paintings demonstrate his fondness for classical analogies and religious subjects.

He died on February 2, 2016, at 2:45 p.m., at the National Hospital of the Defence Housing Authority in Lahore, after catching pneumonia. After Manto, he was dubbed the “best-known Pakistani writer in the world” by the Indian Express.

2) His Main Works:

A Chronicle of the Peacocks: Stories of Partition, Exile and Lost Memories, The Death of Sheherzad, Basti (1979), Chiraghon Ka Dhuvan (memoir) (1999), Chaand Gahan (2002), Ajmal-I Azam (2003), Surakh Tamgha (2007), Qissa Kahanian (2011), Justujoo Kya Hai (autobiography) (2012) and Apni Danist Mein (2014).

3) Main Themes in his Works:

Hussain was a member of a significant literary movement that developed in India in the 1930s and changed Indian and Persian-Arabic literature’s traditional moralist and romantic traditions into Western realism. His signature style was to use surrealistic images, mythology, and Indian, Persian, and Arabic folklore to tell stories about reality – the present. In the 1950s and 1960s, he mostly concentrated on characters that resembled French philosopher Emile Durkheim’s definition of “anomie” – individuals who had lost their identity owing to a breakdown of principles.

In his works, remembrance, nostalgia, Partition, and migration were all frequent topics, giving expression to the human pain and anguish of migration. Basti, Tazkira, Aagay Samander Hai, Hindustan Se Aakhri Khat, Shehr-e-Afsos, and Janam Kahanian are some of his best-known works.

4) Relevance of his Work Today:

Hussain’s presence has practically been a certainty for decades. His continued presence in the literary world led us all to believe that the language and its environment would never be orphaned. Between the past and the present, the classical and the modern, the ordinary and the creative, the writer, translator, and scholar remained a lynchpin. “There was no one like Hussain, and there will be no one like Hussain,” says famous playwright Asghar Nadeem Syed, who has known the writer for almost 40 years. Despite the fact that Urdu has had a difficult time in recent years, Hussain was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013, a first for an Urdu writer. “He introduced us on a global basis,” Syed continues. Following his nomination, he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2014.

Not many authors, according to acclaimed critic Asif Farrukhi, had the bravery to seize the bull by the horns, but Hussain was cut from a different cloth. “He worked miracles with things that others were afraid to write about, whether it was Basti or Sheher-e-Afsos.” Hussain is regarded by Farrukhi as the writer who resurrected the art of storytelling in our region of the globe. Dr Saleem Akhtar writes in his Urdu book Adab Ki Mukhtasir Tareen Tareekh that Hussain’s nostalgia is really a sorrow for the erosion of cultural values in society. He refused to use a mobile phone and insisted that computers were not created for him. Hussain, a supporter of the traditional school of thought led by scholar Muhammad Hasan Askari, never agreed with the Progressive Writers’ Movement’s aim and, according to Dr. Akhtar, had a preference for symbolism.

He could not be classified as “progressive” like other “progressive” authors of his day, but he was also not a romantic, according to Rauf Parekh, a linguist and journalist. Mr Parekh stated in a Dawn column, “His point of view was basically human and philosophical, always leaning towards enlightenment.”

His work has been recognised both at home and abroad, and he was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s third-highest civilian honor. He was one of ten finalists for the Man Booker International Prize for Fiction in 2013, and the first Urdu writer to be nominated for the prize. He was awarded the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres the following year for his efforts. Intizar Hussain to this day makes the tough realities of our society more palatable and surely less suffocating with his essays, articles, and simply his presence.