A Very Strange Man: a novella

Ismat Chughtai

Ismat Chughtai is one of Urdu’s most important writers. Feminist by instinct, long before it was fashionable to be one, she was a progressive who knew that literature changes more lives than political pamphlets can. At a time when women were writing only about how to be a good wife and mother, she set about exposing middle class mores and social hypocrisy, through sharp observation and a rapier-like wit. Chughtai is the author of dozens of short stories, four novellas, three novels, essays, reminiscences and plays. With her husband, Shahid Lateef, she produced and co-directed six films and produced six more independently.

Tahira Naqvi

Tahira Naqvi is a translator, writer, and Clinical Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, where she teaches Urdu language and literature. She has translated the works of Sa’adat Hasan Manto, Khadija Mastur, Hajra Masroor, and the majority of works by Ismat Chughtai, into English. She has published two collections of short stories, Attar of Roses and Other Stories of Pakistan and Dying in a Strange Country. The History Teacher of Lahore is her first novel. Naqvi grew up in Lahore.