Retaining true flavour of the native tongue
In The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947-1997, Salman Rushdie, the editor of the anthology, misleadingly and arrogantly declares, “Prose writing—both fiction and non-fiction created in this period by Indian writers working in English—is proving to be a stronger and more important than most of what has been seen produced in the 16 official languages of India, the so-called vernacular languages….”
While the gross ignorance of Rushdie’s claims has been exposed by other anthologies such as The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature edited by Amit Chaudhari, rarely does one find anthologies of Indian literature that can present the enormous scope of Indian writing in the languages.
Mohammad Umar Memon’s (Professor emeritus of Urdu literature at the University of Wisconsin Madison) edited and translated collection of The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told is what the publishing and reading world had been waiting for.
While most anthologies or collections provide the contextual framing of the selections, it is not very often that one encounters an introduction that expounds on the chosen genre and the literature in a language with such academic acuity and depth.
Many believe that Urdu defies satisfactory translation into English because of its particular cadence and flourish. The task of rendering the flavour and specific literariness of the original into English can be daunting.
Memon’s exquisite translation is clearly produced by his enormous scholarship and his facility in both the source and target languages. Tracing the evolution of the short story form in Urdu, the politics and poetics that influence its development, Memon dispels the romantic and commonly held biases and prejudices that come with Urdu writing.
The collection is a compelling compendium of some of the best known stories (as the editor legitimately claims) in terms of their topical significance and as examples of the major aesthetic phases in the short story form in Urdu.
While the collection includes stories such as Premchand’s ‘The Shroud’, Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’, Rajinder Singh Bedi’s ‘Lajwanti’, the recognised classics of the form, the most substantial part of the book comprises stories that defies standard expectations.
For instance, he chooses Ismat Chughtai’s ‘Of Fists and Rubs’, Naiyer Masud’s ‘Obscure Domains and Fears’, Tassaduq Sohail’s ‘The Tree’, that reflect the vast range of themes and narrative devices found in Urdu short fiction.
Again, the subject of Partition is often seen as the central preoccupation of the Urdu short story writer. Memon challenges this assumption by including narratives that are written mostly after the cataclysmic event of the Partition.
The Greatest Urdu Stories Ever Told sets a benchmark for translated anthologies with the imagination and scholarship that ought to gird such an enterprise.