A Life in Words: Memoirs

A Life in Words: Memoirs

byIsmat Chughtai

A Life in Words, the first complete translation of her celebrated memoir Kaghazi hai Pairahan, provides an authentic and delightful account of several crucial years of Ismat’s life. Presented along with the vivid and high-energy descriptions of her childhood years are the conflicted experiences of growing up in a large Muslim family during the early decades of the twentieth century. We get an intimate view of a writer’s fierce struggle to find her own voice and depict with passion and precision the visible and subtle tyrannies of contemporary society. A Life in Words is a searingly honest and compellingly readable memoir of the life of one of the most significant Urdu writers of all