Author: Naiyer Masud
Muhammad Umar Memon/
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN/UPC (if available): 014309971X
Description
Readers and critics have compared Masud to Kafka, Borges and Murakami. But it is best to speak of his style as pure Masud, for no other writer has rendered a fictional world quite like that of this master storyteller. His prose is spare and seductive and his stories have a shimmering, elusive quality. Although individually perfectly formed and complete, yet each story appears to have no beginning or end, drawing the reader into a seamless narrative structure.
The coming of age of a young boy who looks for domains of fear and desire in the houses he inspects, a man's life shaped by his father's dreams and his mother's devotion, a walk down memory lane to fulfill a mother's dying wish, a beautiful girl with deformed feet-the reader begins to inhabit a world where illusions are as stark as day, and experience Masud's writing in a metaphysical, almost Sufi-like, sense.
REVIEWS
This is a definitive volume, spanning Masud's early to latest writings, leaving the reader spellbound by his elliptical and dramatic prose. Professor Memon deserves special thanks for his meticulous translations and thoughtful introduction.
-Sara Suleri-Goodyear
Even shorn of its immense humanity, Masud's lyricism would dazzle, for he is, without doubt, a poet's storyteller
-Agha Shahid Ali
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire
The Woman in Black
Snake Catcher
Resting Place
Ganjefa
Weather Vane
Custody
Epistle
Lamentation
Allam and Son
The Big Garbage Dump
Sources and Acknowledgements