PAKISTAN Academy of Letters (PAL) was established in 1976 by the government of Pakistan to promote Pakistani languages and their literatures.
PAL is also entrusted with the task of supporting literary activities and literary organisations in the country, which it does quite well. Another commendable part of PAL’s works is to financially support the ailing and/or aged Pakistani authors and intellectuals. This financial support programme for the writers from all over Pakistan has been running quite smoothly and what should be appreciated is the fact that the entire process of this financial aid is kept strictly secret and confidential. The process of selecting the writers for financial aid is also secret and is based on some laid down rules and procedures.
Aside from publishing books, PAL publishes four periodicals, including an Urdu quarterly named Adabiyaat. It is a literary magazine launched in 1987. The magazine has been producing some special issues and some of them are memorable for their significance, for example, special issues on giants like Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Abdullah Hussain, Intizar Hussain and Nabi Bakhsh Baloch.
A few months back, Prof Dr Muhammad Yousuf Khushk assumed charge as the chairman of PAL. Prof Khushk is known for his track record at Shah Abdul Latif University and teaching, researching, organising international conferences and editing research journals is his forte. So ever since his taking over as chairman, PAL has been buzzing with activities, though Covid-19 has restricted the nature and scope of these activities. Interestingly, PAL recently organised some online literary gatherings.
As PAL is responsible for the award of national literary prizes, recently some literary prizes, too, were announced — including the Kamal-i-Fan Award or Lifetime Achievement Award, the country’s highest literary award, which was bagged by Muneer Badeeni, a writer from Balochistan.
So one was naturally waiting for the resumption of PAL’s publications and especially for the new issue of Adabiyaat as it has been quite long since the last issue was published. And it seems the wait was worth it: PAL has come up with two voluminous, special issues of Adabiyaat, tagged as ‘Urdu Novel, Derh Sadi Ka Qissa’ (Urdu novel, the saga of one-and-a-half century).
Published under the supervision of Prof Khushk and edited by Akhter Raza Saleemi, these two volumes are indeed a remarkable treatise on Urdu novel. Divided into different sections, the first volume covers the history of Urdu novel from beginning to the end of the 20th century. It evaluates and analyses historical, literary and technical aspects of Urdu novel. Renowned scholars, critics and novelists have elaborated upon the dimensions of the art and craft of novel and Urdu novel. A section discusses Urdu novels written in Pakistan. Another section captures the essence of Urdu novels written in Balochistan and KP, which is a topic hitherto almost untouched.
It is simply not possible to mention all the writers who have contributed to these two issues as all in all there are about 130 articles and while some of them are written by veterans and seniors, it is really heartening to note that many pieces are penned by young and promising scholars. It is a good omen for the future of Urdu literature. A few of the articles by senior critics are the ones that had appeared before elsewhere and are reproduced, but they serve the purpose of providing the readers with some basic and background information, though most of the articles have been written for these issues especially.
As the first volume has 556 pages and the second one 598, one finds it difficult to describe them even summarily. But one can safely say that it is a historic work as these two volumes present the most comprehensive critical and research work so far done on Urdu novel by any literary magazine as the previous efforts, albeit commendable, have not been as exhaustive as the magazines under review.
A special attraction for the researchers and the students of Urdu research is the section that enlists the critical and research work so far done on Urdu novel. In this portion in addition to a few articles, there are four lists, compiled by Akhter Raza Saleemi, Khursheed Rabbani and Shahana Maryam Shan. The first list is based on bibliographic works and offers the titles of Urdu novels, published both in India and Pakistan, with the names of their authors. The total number of these novels is over 3,000. The second list presents the titles of research dissertations written on Urdu novels in Pakistani universities and it includes about 350 such works. The third list covers dissertations on Urdu novels written in Indian universities and it names about 400 of them. The last one is a list of books published on Urdu novel and enlists about 400 such works.
Reading these two issues of Adabiyaat is a must for anyone interested in Urdu novels and the critical and research works on the subject.
Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2020
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