Intikhab-e-Kalam: Kishwar Naheed

Description

This is a selection of the poems of Kishwar Naheed, who was born into a family that frowned upon higher education for girls, and where literary activity was a taboo. She rebelled on both scores, gaining higher education and acquiring celebrity as a poet and writer. Quite understandably, she became an activist for women’s liberation. This aspect of her activism, fully reflected in her poetry, became heightened during the reactionary regime of Ziaul Haq. In her formative phase, she modelled her poetry on the modern poets of her generation. Finding her metier in blank verse, Kishwar Naheed, moved on to prose poems, which she composes with unusual felicity. Kishwar Naheed has published her autobiography Buri Aurat Ki Katha and has translated Simone du Beauvoir’s The Second Sex into Urdu.

Author Biography

Dr. Asif Farrukhi is a professor, short story-writer, critic and a renowned literary figure of Pakistan. He has compiled many anthologies of Pakistani writers. He regularly contributes to a leading daily, Dawn Karachi and different literary periodicals. He is currently editing and publishing a literary miscellany in Urdu Duniyazaad. He is a Doctor of Medicine by profession. He received the Prime Minister’s award for literature in 1995 and Tamgha-i-Imtiaz in 2005 by the President of Pakistan.