Musharraf Ali Farooqi

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Musharraf Ali Farooqi (born 26 July 1968, Hyderabad, Pakistan) is a Pakistani writer, translator, and storyteller. Farooqi was among the five writers shortlisted for Asia's most prestigious literary prize in 2012.^[1] In addition to his fiction and translation projects, he is working on establishing an Urdu language publishing program specializing in children's literature and classics. He founded the publishing house KITAB (2012), launched the online Urdu Thesaurus (2016), and designed the interactive storytelling and reading initiative STORYKIT Program (2016). These three projects have been integrated in an activity-based learning program for children.

The Merman and the Book of Power: A Qissa is his newest work.

Biography[]

Farooqi received his early education in Hyderabad, at St Bonaventure's High School. He later attended in Hyderabad, Sindh and, afterwards, NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi for three years, though he did not finish his degree.^[2]

While working as a journalist in Karachi, he also started a small literary magazine called Cipher in collaboration with his friends, Azhar Ali Abidi and Zainab Masud. This was the period when he started writing stories in English, and simultaneously translating poetry from Urdu into English. His first translation was of a poem by the contemporary poet Afzal Ahmed Syed.^[3]

Farooqi is the author of the novel Between Clay And Dust, which was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. His earlier novel, The Story of a Widow, was shortlisted for the 2011 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and considered for the 2010 International Dublin Literary Award. Rabbit Rap is a modernist fable for young adults. His children's books includes the collection The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man and Other Stories, illustrated by Michelle Farooqi, which was shortlisted for the India ComicCon Award in the "Best Publication for Children" category, and the picture book The Cobbler's Holiday: or Why Ants Don't Wear Shoes.

Farooqi's translation of the 1871 version of Dastan-e Amir Hamza (Adventures of Amir Hamza) by and was published in October 2007. He published the first book of a projected 24-volume translation of the world's first magical fantasy epic, ,^[4] in 2009. A selection from his translation of contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed's poetry was published by the Wesleyan University Press Poetry Series in 2010.

In July 2016, after five years of development, he launched his latest project "The URDU THESAURUS", (http://urduthesaurus.com/). Through the Urdu Thesaurus website and app, over forty thousand unique words and phrases, and over twenty thousand sets of synonyms can be searched. Currently featuring only synonyms, its future versions will have integrated Urdu-to-Urdu lexicons, bilingual dictionaries, and dictionaries of antonyms, idioms and proverbs.^[5]

His project Kahani Se Kitab Tak programme focuses on teaching Urdu language to children through stories in a graduated reading program. The programme aims to replace the current, failed method of teaching Urdu, and introduces children to the Urdu language, its classical literature, and our folklore through engaging, age-appropriate books. It is our hope that the time spent listening to and reading these stories will forever keep alive their interest in literature. This programme is already running successfully in two branches of the Lahore Grammar School, there is interest from many other schools in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

He is founder of The STORYKIT Program which introduces children to reading by building their engagement with stories through participation in interactive storytelling and games. This leads to children becoming interested in reading stories, engaging with the plots through games, and developing the confidence to narrate the stories themselves. The STORYKIT Program has been piloted in two private school systems in Lahore. Recently, it was piloted for UNESCO in twenty government primary schools, and ten Non-Formal Basic Education centres located in district Muzaffargarh, Punjab, In addition to developing the reading habit in children, the program demonstrably helped them develop self-confidence, improve communications skills, and increase school attendance and enrollment.

Awards and honours[]

• 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, Finalist, for the novel Between Clay and Dust^[6]
• 2011 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for Hoshruba: The Prisoner of Batin, translated from the Urdu^[7]
• 2011 , Finalist for The Story of a Widow^[8]
• Harvard South Asia Institute Fellow, Spring 2017
• Member Executive Committee, Board of Governors of the Archaeology and Literary Heritage Endowment Fund of the Government of Pakistan

Bibliography[]

Novels[]

• Between Clay and Dust: A Novel (Aleph Book Company, 2012)
• The Story of a Widow (Alfred A. Knopf, 2008)
• Salar Jang's Passion (Summersdale Publishers, UK, 2002; HarperCollins India, 2001)

Qissas[]

• The Merman and the Book of Power (Aleph Book Company, 2019)
• The Jinn Darazgosh (2010)

Children's Fiction[]

• Tik-Tik: The Master of Time – children's novel
• Rabbit Rap (Viking/Penguin Books India, 2012) – an illustrated novel with art by Michelle Farooqi
• The Amazing Moustaches of Moochhander the Iron Man & Other Stories (Puffin India, 2011) – illustrated by Michelle Farooqi
• The Cobbler's Holiday: or Why Ants Don’t Wear Shoes (Roaring Brook Press, 2008)

Translations[]

• Rococo and Other Worlds – Selected Poetry of Afzal Ahmed Syed (Wesleyan University Press Poetry Series, 2010)
• The Beast Tranquebar Press/Westland Books, 2010) – translation of Syed Muhammad Ashraf's Urdu novella Numberdar ka Neela
• Hoshruba: The Land and the Tilism (2009) – originally published (1883–1893) in Urdu as by and
• The Adventures of Amir Hamza (2007) – originally written in Urdu by
• Mouse Pickle
• Three Sindhi Folktales (2014)

Folktale Retellings in Urdu[]

• پیٹو ریچھ اور شاندار کھچڑی (2019
• بینگن شہزادی (2019
• مٹریا اور پٹریا (2019
• جوں چٹ پٹ (2018
• پودنا اور پودنی (2017

Essays[]

• Singh, Jai Arjun, ed. (2011). "The Foot-Worshipper's Guide to Watching Maula Jatt". The Popcorn Essayists: What Movies Do to Writers. Tranquebar.
• "The Poetics of Amir Hamza's World: Notes on the Ghalib Lakhnavi/Abdullah Bilgrami Version". Annual of Urdu Studies. 24: 89–97. 2009.
• "Introduction to Tilism-e Hoshruba". Annual of Urdu Studies. 24: 71–88. 2009.
• "The Simurgh Feather Guide to the Poetics of Dastan-e Amir Hamza Sahibqiran". Annual of Urdu Studies. 15: 119–167. 2000.

References[]

External links[]

• Urdu Project
• Hoshruba