Ghalib

This selection of poetry and prose by Ghalib provides an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the preeminent Urdu poet of the nineteenth century. Ghalib’s poems, especially his ghazals, remain beloved throughout South Asia for their arresting intelligence and lively wit

Ghalib (the pen name of Mirza Asadullah Khan) lived from 1797 to 1869. Primarily famous for his Urdu ghazals, he is also known for his letters, which paint a vivid picture of life in nineteenth-century Delhi.

Frances W. Pritchett is professor emerita of modern Indic languages at Columbia University. Her books include Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics (1994), The Romance Tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah (1991), and Ab-e Hayat: Shaping the Canon of Urdu Poetry (2001), translated, edited, and introduced in association with S. R. Faruqi.

Owen Cornwall is a visiting lecturer at Columbia University in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. He is currently working on a book manuscript about Alexander the Great in the premodern Persian literary tradition.

Syed Akbar Hyder, The University of Texas at Austin:
The engaging tone of this rigorous volume will make Ghalib accessible to a wide-ranging audience that does not speak Persian or Urdu. It successfully brings into focus the reigning tropes and motifs of Perso-Urdu poetry and Islam. Yet the real importance of the work lies in its profound approach to translation; Pritchett and Cornwall extract beauty from a close reading of the texts without venturing into a discourse that does not accord closely with the original Perso-Urdu words and idioms.

Carla Petievich, The University of Texas at Austin:
Ghalib: Selected Poems and Letters is a tour de force, an offering of love by one of our most prominent contemporary scholars of Urdu poetry. Pritchett brings to this anthology a lifetime of scholarly devotion to Ghalib, while Cornwall demonstrates his promise as an emerging scholar. This volume offers new insight to fellow devotees of Ghalib's poetry through extraordinary translations, all contextualized by a rich body of historical, cultural, biographical and secondary literary materials. To the interested novice who takes this book up, a door will open revealing a beguiling and wondrous world.

Asif Farrukhi, editor of An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets:
Ghalib once described himself as "A nightingale of a yet to be created garden, singing with the white heat of an ecstatic imagination." Gifted with the vision of a seer, he could well be describing how this elegant and dazzling translation makes his poetry come alive in English, a world apart from his nineteenth century Delhi. This is a superb introduction to this marvelous poet, resonant with his subtle nuances and exquisite meanings.

C. M. Naim, University of Chicago:
Ghalib is the first ample and compact introduction to the Urdu oeuvre of the last great 'Mughal' poet of India. It fills a long felt lacuna, and does so admirably well. The translators have provided all that a reader might need to get closer to the poet and the man, including Ghalib's own comments on many of his 'difficult' verses.