Basti

Intizar Husain was born in the United Provinces, India, on 21 December 1925. He emigrated to Pakistan in 1947 and nowlives in Lahore. He has written seven collections of short stories and five novels, Naya Ghar, Basti and Aage Samandar Hai being the most significant among them. Considered one of the greatest living Urdu writers of our time, he was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and literary historian. She has published over fifteen books, including Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Urdu; A Rebel and Her Cause: The Life and Work of Comrade Rashid Jahan; The Death of Sheherzad by Intizar Husain translated from the Urdu; Invisible City: The Hidden Monuments of Delhi; as well as four edited volumes of short stories. Her debut collection of fiction, Release and Other Stories, was published in 2011 and received critical acclaim. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture, and writes a weekly column for Daily O.