The Organic brew; London, pakistan, photography, travel, poetry & a general acerbic sentiment.

New Karachi literary festival hopes to turn page on pak lit

// February 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // Articles, Reading(s)

News of the festival comes at a time of mounting interest in Pakistani literature. The trend was perhaps sparked by the publication in 2007 of Hamids novella, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. That was followed by Hanifs dark A Case of Exploding Mangoes and a collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Worlds, by Daniyal Mueenuddin. A copy of the latter was given to the US President, Barack Obama, by his regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, who said of the collection of interwoven stories: “Its beautiful.” Meanwhile, Kamila Shamsie, whose fifth novel, Burnt Shadows, was published last year, has also received international acclaim.

via New Karachi literary festival hopes to turn page on bombs - Asia, World – The Independent.

Urdu short stories: 6 translations into English of Patras Bokhari (Six Humorous Pieces)

// February 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // Reading(s)

I have no wish to blaspheme, but, before i go further – i should explain that im not a big fan of urdu short stories, somehow. Patras, the illustrious Patras Bokhari is held up as one of urdu’s finest modern short story writers.

Whilst to me, what appeal they do have is for Patras’ simple and lucid style in Urdu, since they are held in such esteem, i’d hunted for them for a while before I found these on the internet.

So, I present them here.

Please note that all rights are held by the authors, i’ve only archived it below because they we’rnt exactly the first google result and urdustudies (the journal where they appeared) seems to have its future hanging in the balance.

Source: http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/23/11Patras.pdf

So, without further ado:

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Let Them Snuff Out the Moon – Faiz’s prison poetry: a line blurred between beauty and suffering

// February 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Poetry, Reading(s)

VB pointed me to this:

http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/2010/01/28/BLOGS/16744

Which has a translation of Faiz’s ‘Zindan ki ek shaam’ by Agha Shahid Ali:

Each star a rung,
night comes down the spiral
staircase of the evening.
The breeze passes by so very close
as if someone just happened to speak of love.
In the courtyard,
the trees are absorbed refugees
embroidering maps of return on the sky.
On the roof,
the moon – lovingly, generously -
is turning the stars
into a dust of sheen.
From every corner, dark-green shadows,
in ripples, come towards me.
At any moment they may break over me,
like the waves of pain each time I remember
this separation from my lover.

This thought keeps consoling me:
though tyrants may command that lamps be smashed
in rooms where lovers are destined to meet,
they cannot snuff out the moon, so today,
nor tomorrow, no tyranny will succeed,
no poison of torture make me bitter,
if just one evening in prison
can be so strangely sweet,
if just one moment anywhere on this earth.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali

Which, in turn, led me to an article on urdustudies.com by Genoways - “Let Them Snuff Out the Moon”: Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Prison Lyrics in Dast-e Saba (pdf). Which starts as follows:

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Readers by Author « Lauren Leto

// December 23rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Reading(s)

So i guess this is where i fit in…

Ernest Hemingway

Men who own cottages.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

People who get adjustable-rate mortgages.

Vladimir Nabokov

Men who use words like ‘dubious’ and ‘tenacity’.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sommeliers.

via Readers by Author « Lauren Leto.

Borges and the garden of forking paths

// October 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Reading(s)

I remembered too that night which is at the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Scheherazade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relate word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the risk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus to infinity.

-Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths