Literary Works
A prolific writer (she began to write at the young age of 11), her literary works include some 12 novels and novellas and four collections of short stories. Hyder has also done a significant amount of translation of classics. Her own works have been translated into English and other languages.
Aag Ka Duriya (River of Fire), her magnum opus, is a landmark novel that explores the vast sweep of time and history. It tells a story that moves from the fourth century BC to the post-Independence period in India and Pakistan, pausing at the many crucial epochs of history. Aamer Hussein in The Times Literary Supplement wrote that River of Fire is to Urdu fiction what One Hundred Years of Solitude is to Hispanic literature. Aag Ka Darya is essentially a novel written from the point of view of the believers of Pakistan and depicts their agony in detail, specially towards the climax of the novel.
Her other published works include: "Mere Bhi Sanam Khane", 1949; "Safina-e-Gham-e-Dil", 1952; Patjhar ki Awaz (The Voice of Autumn), 1965; Raushni ki Raftar (The Speed of Light), 1982; the short novel Chaye ke Bagh (Tea Plantations), 1965 (one of four novellas including Dilruba, Sita Haran, Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Na Kijo, exploring gender injustice) ; and the family chronicle Kar e Jahan Daraz Hai (The Work of the World Goes On).
Compared to her exact contemporaries, Milan Kundera and Gabriel García Márquez, the breadth of her literary canvas, her vision and insight, transcend time.
Amitav Ghosh writes that "hers is one of the most important Indian voices of the twentieth century."
Her first short story, Bi-Chuhiya (Little Miss Mouse), was published in children’s magazine Phool and at the age of nineteen wrote her first novel "Mayray Bhee Sanam khanay".
Read more about this topic: Qurratulain Hyder
Famous quotes containing the words literary works, literary and/or works:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)