In the contemporary world of letters, infiltrated by brand and persona marketing, being a master of more than one literary domain presents a problem, which I would term the “problem of persona summation.”

Now, factor in a period of our civilisation when both the madrassa system and the modern academic-industrial complex have lost focus on developing well-rounded intellectuals who can offer intelligent commentary and critical insights on literature through their ability to simultaneously access many branches of knowledge. And we find ourselves in a wasteland, where truly eminent literary and intellectual works could lie undiscovered even by the majority of people working in different branches of literature, and dismissed on one or more pretexts by self-styled and mostly self-appointed grandees.

I felt it again keenly as I read Mehmood Ul Hassan’s Shamsur Rahman Faruqi: Jis Ki Thhi Baat Baat Mein Ik Baat (Lahore: Qausain Publishers, 2024), a collection of conversations and written exchanges with critic, poet, theorist and author Shamsur Rahman Faruqi.

In this brief work, Faruqi talks about literature, his writing process, and his assessment of some of the major contemporary and classical writers and poets. With the compiler entirely removing himself from the narrative, leaving subject headings instead, we can hear, uninterrupted, Faruqi’s thoughts on many aspects of our literary and civilisational history.

Many years ago, when Faruqi’s magisterial novel Kaee Chaand Thhay Sar-i-Aasman came out (later translated into English by the author as The Mirror of Beauty), it was reviewed in these pages by the late Intizar Hussain, a well-known Urdu writer, and someone whose work Faruqi had profusely praised.

In my opinion, which is shared by many others who have read widely in both Urdu and international literature, it is the greatest novel written in the Urdu language, and one of the great novels of world literature.

In his review of the book, Intizar Husain had nothing intelligent to say about the novel’s merits, and ended his lackadaisical review by identifying what he found to be a major fault with the book, profound enough to be identified in so many words: There was no description of food! (I paraphrase because I could not find Intizar Husain’s article in Dawn’s online archives).

I was very disappointed by Intizar Husain’s disingenuousness in commenting on a major work of our civilisation and lost all respect for him. His silly objection, which was, in a way, a commentary on his own intellect, also rankled Faruqi, because he dismisses it as such in one of the passages in the present book.

It is not to say that one cannot critique Faruqi’s work. I was fortunate to have extensive exchanges with him over the years about what I admired and loved about his work, and the great man was gracious enough never to set any boundaries when I did criticise it.

Although it was a subjective quibble, I felt that, by imposing a frame story in the first pages of Kaee Chaand Thhay Sar-i-Aasman, Faruqi had created an unnecessary dissonance between the reader and the narrative, and that, in terms of structural perfection, his novella Sawaar, translated into English by the author as The Rider, should be rated above his longer work. And yet, judged in its entirety, and taking into account the scope and complexity of the narrative, Kaee Chaand remains an unparalleled achievement in Urdu novel-writing.

One could also take exception to Faruqi’s miscellaneous critical views about which modern Urdu poet or short story writer was more praiseworthy, and with his dismissive attitude about the great Nazir Akbarabadi, whose work is truly exceptional from every perspective. But one realises that every great mind has a right to such eccentric, even unjust, views and Faruqi’s was certainly one of the greatest we’ve had in our midst.

In the last few decades, nobody suffered more from the persona summation problem than Shamsur Rahman Faruqi. Was he a greater critic than he was a novelist? Was he a greater novelist than he was a short story writer? Was he a greater poet than he was a writer of prose? Where does one place him as an editor of a prominent literary magazine with a 40-year publishing history, or as a lexicographer? What all that these debates express is the oversized imprint Faruqi’s work has left on Urdu literature.

In my view, two areas of Faruqi’s work will grow in importance over the years. The first one is his fiction, in which Faruqi yoked his intimate knowledge of Indo-Islamic culture, language and literature to his powerful imagination, to create memorable fictions and immortal characters like Wazir Khanum.

Faruqi makes an interesting argument about his novel: “A work is its author’s property; if he were to say that it’s a novel it should be considered as such. It is the author who designs it, and his intent and clues to the structure cannot be discounted. I say this not to define the work but the terms on which its structure is raised. I have not written a historical novel. It does not contain historical characters or characters who influenced history in the Subcontinent. It discusses those who lived on the margins of history, rather in the obscure regions of those margins. It does not contain history, but a civilisation that we have forgotten, and no longer remember that it ever existed.”

The other area in which Faruqi’s work will gain influence is the critical apparatus he presented in the exploration of Mir Taqi Mir’s poetry in the four-volume Shaer-i-Shor Angez [The Uproarious Verse], and the four-volume study of the dastaan, Sahiri, Shahi, Sahibqirani [Sorcery, Kingship and the Lordship of Auspicious Planetary Conjunction].

It would not be wrong to say that whatever Faruqi had written about poetry and the nature of shaer before Shaer-i-Shor Angez was in preparation for this work. And all that he learned from structural theorists and critics found application when he sat down to compose his thoughts on the structure and poetics of the dastaan.

Mehmood Ul Hassan’s collection offers an intimate insight into Faruqi’s thoughts about his contemporaries, his literary compass, and what he found of value in those he learned from. The frank, conversational tone of this book makes it the kind of work one keeps returning to.

The columnist is a novelist, author and translator.

He can be reached via his website: micromaf.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 11th, 2026