Review of Story is a Vagabond (MĀNOA 27:1)

Manoa 27:1 Story is A Vagabond, Intizar HusainAsymptote Journal features a compelling review of Story is a Vagabond: Fiction, Essays and Drama by Intizar Husain, published by MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing (27:1, 2015) and UH Press.

One of Pakistan’s most distinguished writers, Intizar Husain was born in India in 1923 and immigrated to Pakistan during the Partition. An internationally acclaimed writer, critic, and translator, he has published seven volumes of short stories, four novels, and a novella, as well as travelogues, memoirs, and critical essays. Despite his importance to world literature for over six decades, Husain’s writing is little known in English translation. Story is a Vagabond is the first collection in English to show the breadth of his thoughtful, innovative, and compassionate work.

Reviewer Aamer Hussein writes that the editors of this special issue managed “a level of translucence through which Husain’s distinctive intonations echo and resound.” Read the review online here.

Order your copy of Story is a Vagabond from UH Press.

Browse content online via Project MUSE.

Subscribe to MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing

Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India

The Language of Secular IslamThe Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India, by Kavita Datla, pursues an alternative account of the political disagreements between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia, conflicts too often described as the product of primordial and unchanging attachments to religion. The author suggests that the political struggles of India in the 1930s, the very decade in which the demand for Pakistan began to be articulated, should not be understood as the product of an inadequate or incomplete secularism, but as the clashing of competing secular agendas. Her work explores negotiations over language, education, and religion at Osmania University, the first university in India to use a modern Indian language (Urdu) as its medium of instruction, and sheds light on questions of colonial displacement and national belonging.

“This is a brilliantly innovative book that offers provocative insights into South Asian history, the workings of colonialism, and the interface of linguistic and religious identities in India’s premier princely state of Hyderabad. The author marshals an impressive range of sources to make a significant intervention in the field of Islamicate learning, moving beyond the much-discussed madrasa mode of education to document the birth and growth of India’s first vernacular public university.” —Syed Akbar Hyder, University of Texas at Austin

January 2013 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3609-2 / $49.00 (CLOTH)