Basti has ratings and 42 reviews. Zanna said: My first and last journey with her. We left Vyaspur before dawn, but when the lorry reached Bulandshahr. A review, and links to other information about and reviews of Basti by Intizar Husain. : Basti (New York Review Books Classics) (): Intizar Husain, Frances W. Pritchett, Asif Farrukhi: Books.
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There is a lot unexplained and unexamined from the original partition and the separation of eastern – western Pakistan. Party atmosphere set to sweep across major cities in Asia and other continents as the clock ticks past midnight.
Them too, so I can know how the goodness and sincerity gradually died intlzar from the days, how the days came to be filled with misfortune and nights with ill omen. Basti is a different kind of piecemeal historical novel, less concerned with detailed realism and continuity; as such, in many ways, it is also more true to life.
Written by, apparently, modern Urdu’s most beloved novelist, Basti is a dream of Pakistan, from it’s bloody birth in partition to the war which gave birth to Bangladesh.
Refresh and try again. This madness has to stop, at some stage as cultures of the severed provinces are exactly the same. I truly felt how painful and excruciating the experience of Partition was for many of the books characters. Yet, there are remembrances toa bell-tolling; both a banner and a scar. If you are intizzr in South Asian history, and South Asian literary, this book is a must read.
As we crossed over the Ganges intizag the bridge, darkness fell. The a major plot revolves around Zakir – his desires, his visions and his present.
It should be remembered that Husain, now considered a torchbearer of progressive thought in Intizwr language and literature, was never a firebrand revolutionary in the way that other luminaries in Urdu are known as. There were wonderfully lyrical passages but it intizqr felt too disjointed to be compelling.
By the late part of the novel, when the war has broken out, Zakir takes to writing a diary, and the entries drift between the present, history and myth—as though the only way to understand or express the moment is by reaching back to stories that carry the weight of centuries.
She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London. There is also frequent reference to important moments in Indian history such as the war ofwith Britain, that I didn’t know anything about. Love is primary in Basti and everything flows from it, even when it is only a shadow of a memory of a touch Husain offers detailed and often dialogue-heavy scenes, but skips over great periods of time, in a novel that is more photograph album than a narrative focused on continuity.
But truth to tell, the man who blends the personal with the impersonal, specific with the universal, actually has the past much to thank for. The historical moment is intizarr the brutal war out of which Bangladesh was born. This novel, to the extent it is historical, is about that nusain. But I loved the common man view intizaar great events like the Partition and Partition of Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Translation of celebrated Urdu novel Basti reveals search for a homeland
It is being published in Pakistan by Sang-e-Meel Publishers. Rupnagar and this city have merged together inside me, baeti become one town. However, as an English-language reader, I found something stilting about the pace and flow of the book. And whether I’m right or not, the symbolic burp is casual and reflexive.
Basti by Intizar Husain – Penguin Books Australia
Basti is the great Pakistani novel, a beautifully written, brilliantly inventive reckoning with the violent history of a country whose turbulence, ambitions, and uncertainties increasingly concern the whole world.
Like other borderland literature, Basti renders lines drawn on a map as an emotional geography that blurs them. Bastiwritten inis set in when war clouds are gathering, the new country of Pakistan is no longer fresh and pure and hopeful but soiled and weary and entirely without hope and news from distant East Pakistan is ominous.
No trivia or intizarr yet. Here I feel not only the loss of the beloved place, but the loss he feels in that discontinuity with her, that bsati precious to him has been thrown away Not a beach read, more like a book I’d recommend reading as part of a modern Asian history class with a teacher that can give more context and flesh out the symbolism as well as the literary and cultural references that make up so much of the book.
He was given the highest l Intizar Hussain was an Urdu and English language Pakistani writer of short stories, novels, poetry, columns and non-fiction.
There is so much going on at the same time and that can be conflicting. Yar, how strange it is that the same town becomes for one of its inhabitants, who has left the country, more meaningful than before, so that he dreams about it; while for another inhabitant all its meaning disappears, so that even though [s]he’s in the same country, [s]he never feels any desire to see the town again The town where he and Sabirah lived as children is deeply important to Zakir, but Sabirah, who stayed in India while her family left, feels differently.
Here you will not find a history that steps from event to event explaining the cause hisain effect of each.
Huusain up to our newsletter using your email. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Somehow, at some point, her hand came into mine.