THE one Urdu book that stood out above all others I have read this past year is undoubtedly Intizar Husain's Aagey Samundar Hai. I can say this not just because it is a powerful book, and an important one, but also because it contains within its pages all that is most remarkable about Intizar sahib's very distinctive writing. The fact that I translated it meant that I also did a close reading of the text and virtually 'lived' with this book till it was published a month ago as The Sea Lies Ahead.

Khalid Jawed's modernist Nematkhana reassured me that the novel is alive and well in India, just as Zakia Mashhadi's short story collection Yeh Jahan-e Rang-o Boo demonstrated that the Urdu story is as robust as ever in its contemporary avatar. One story in particular by Mashhadi, 'Bhediya Secular Hai' is located in the forested heartland of India and makes a profound political statement.

Two ongoing projects have caused me to revisit two old favourites: the poetry of Shahryar and the prose of Ismat Chughtai. I am currently working on two projects simultaneously: a biography of Shahryar, and editing a collection of critical writings on Chughtai in her centenary year. While both works will be in English, I am reading and rereading copious amounts of their writings in Urdu and enjoying every moment, not to mention the writings of their contemporaries and critics on them. Sitting beside me, as I type this, is Naiyer Masud's Collected Stories, an omnibus edited and translated by Muhammad Umar Memon. No summing up of this year's Urdu reading can be complete without Khirman: a five volume set of the most stunning poetry by Muztar Khairabadi painstakingly collected and published by his grandson, Javed Akhtar.