Snake Catcher: Stories / Naiyer Masud Translated from the Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon

Snake Catcher: Stories / Naiyer Masud

Translated from the Urdu by Muhammad Umar Memon

Snake Catcher

Resting Place

Epistle

Ganjefa

Custody

Weather Vane

Allam and Son

The Big Garbage Dump

Postscript: Hard copy -- Obscure Domains of Fear and Desire, The Woman in Black and Lamentation.

'The most extraordinary fictional voice to have emerged in world literature this decade' -- Amit Chaudhuri

‘Even shorn of its immense humanity, Masud's lyricism would dazzle, for he is, without doubt, a poet's storyteller' —Agha Shahid Ali

Readers and critics have compared Masud to Kafka, Borges and Murakami. But it is best to speak of his style as pure Masud, for no other writer has rendered a fictional world quite like that of this master storyteller. His prose is spare and seductive and his stories have a shimmering, elusive quality. Although individually perfectly formed and complete, yet each story appears to have no beginning or end, drawing the reader into a seamless narrative structure. The coming of age of a young boy who looks for domains of fear and desire in the houses he inspects, a man's life shaped by his father's dreams and his mother's devotion, a walk down memory lane to fulfil a mother's dying wish, a beautiful girl with deformed feet—the reader begins to inhabit a world where illusions are as stark as day, and experience Masud's writing in a metaphysical, almost Sufi-like, sense.

‘This is a definitive volume, spanning [Masud's] early to latest writings, leaving the reader spellbound by his elliptical and dramatic prose. Professor Memon deserves special thanks for his meticulous translations and thoughtful introduction'—Sara Suleri-Goodyear

Naiyer Masud was born in 1936 in Lucknow. A scholar of Persian and Urdu, and a renowned translator of Kafka, he began writing stories in early boyhood. He has published three highly acclaimed collections in Urdu, including Seemiya and Essence of Camphor.

Muhammad Umar Memon is professor of Islamic studies, Urdu and Persian at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of The Color of Nothingness: Modern Urdu Short Stories and The Tale of the Old Fisherman: Contemporary Urdu Short Stories.