Awards: Out of Print Author and Guest Editor, Annie Zaidi, Awarded

Annie Zaidi has won the US $100,000 Nine Dots Prize for 2019-2020.

The intention of the prize is to encourage innovative thinking that addresses contemporary issues and Zaidi’s entry ‘Bread, Cement, Cactus’ explores concepts of home and belonging rooted in her experience of contemporary life in India. A book she will develop, based on her Nine Dots Prize-winning essay will be published by Cambridge University Press in May 2020. The book will examine how a citizen’s sense of ‘home’ might collapse, or be recovered. Themes it will address include:

·     The politics and economics of death in India, and how the physical performance of last rites for the dead can lead to a sense of dislocation and the unmooring of living citizens

·     How industrial townships are created on the back of a series of dislocations, and what this means for citizens’ relationships to the land

·     The crossing of caste and religious lines in marriage, and the abuse of political power to violently disrupt or prevent the mixing of bloodlines

·     The Partition of India as a great cultural and emotional sundering, ultimately triggering an aggressive nationalism that seeks a negative self-definition rather than a positive one

·     The struggle to belong to a city when it changes in all recognisable forms, even down to its name, and when it is stripped of all the original springs of cultural affinity

Zaidi has been part of the Out of Print family, published stories in Out of Print and worked as a guest editor on the special Urdu edition of the magazine, and we wanted to take a moment to congratulate her on this exciting achievement. 

When we reached out to her, she was kind enough to send us a beautiful poem, a sonnet, that explores the meaning of roads that lead … to home, to Rome. So, in celebration, we share this with our readers. 

Sonnet 4: R/h/ome.

All the roads that lead to Rome
started out wanting to twist away
from any place that smelled like home
or any face that bade them stay.

All roads bleed out of arms
wrenched free of cradle nights,
taped down with screaming tar
and fringed about with fairy lights.

All the roads that led to you 
were paved with shards of broken sleep.
You were walking barefoot too:
How's it you failed to bleed?

Ah, twisted wends, yet twisting home.
All these roads besieging Rome.

(C) Annie Zaidi

Links to Zaidi's stories and to the special Urdu edition she edited with Out of Print:

Sujatha in Out of Print 5, 2011.

The story follows a young woman confronted with violence who will go to all lengths to survive.

Inverter in Out of Print 16, 2014

The protagonist establishes a silent connection with a person who lives across the street, a delicious, seductive connection. Layers of social norms come in to play as the narrative weaves in and out of the darkness of summer power outages in Kanpur.

Out of Print 28, 2017

Short story writing in Urdu, called 'afsana-nigari', is just over a century old. The literary cannon in this genre includes names like Premchand, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Qurratulain Hyder, Krishan Chander, Naiyer Masud, and of course, Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chugtai. 

The 28th issue of Out of Print, devoted to Urdu short fiction translated into English, features a selection of fine stories chosen by Zaidi.

Out of Print 28

Urdu does not lack for lovers. Tens of millions of people across the subcontinent and, indeed, around the world, would agree with Gulzar in saying that the language gives you a high, that it goes down your throat like a gulp of wine[1]. Much of the love has been apportioned by poetry but fiction too has its fair share of fans.

Short story writing, called 'afsana-nigari' in Urdu, is a relatively new form, just over a century old and the wealth of theme and narrative innovation has only grown since. The literary cannon in this genre includes names like Premchand, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Qurratulain Hyder, Krishan Chander, Naiyer Masud, and of course, Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chugtai, who have been widely translated, published and performed in recent years. Happily, with new translations appearing every year, more work has become accessible to readers in English.

We hope that this 28th issue of Out of Print, devoted to Urdu short fiction, featuring a select set of translations, will be as much of a journey of discovery and as much of a joy to read as it has been for the editors.

Dhanpat Rai who wrote first as Nawab Rai, and later as Munshi Premchand, is among the foremost writers of his generation, or indeed, all generations since. His stories are often prescribed on school syllabi for his canny ability to observe the world with innocent eyes. Qazzazi, translated by Fatima Rizvi, is the story of a child's friendship with the man who delivered the post and told marvellous tales.

In contrast, Abdullah Hussain's Spring, translated by Raza Naeem, gives us an old man's view of his own life. What happens when a retired Brigadier with an unwavering sense of routine meets a younger man while he's out on a walk?

Shaukat Hayat's Pigeons of the Dome, translated by Sara Rai, appears to offer a delicate portrait of a genteel existence, filled with children, pigeons, snakes, cats and rakish friends, only to disrupt it with the evidence of more troubling strands of lust and undefined damage.

Animals feature again in Azra Abbas' The Chameleon's Game, translated by Daisy Rockwell. Told from the point of view of a chameleon, this story uses just a few deft strokes to change colour, from innocuous to distressing. 

Intizar Hussain's Reserved Seat, translated by Rakhshanda Jalil, delves into the world of dreams and portents through the familiar character of Badi Boo who, as much as she is ready to depart, is still quite tangled in her earthly affections.

Ali Akbar Natiq's The Graveyard, translated by Ali Madeeh Hashmi, delves into the politics of burials in a village, access to land, and exposes the way feudalism and class distinction undercuts every aspect of life, including death.

Guest Editor: Annie Zaidi

Other translations of Urdu work available on Out of Print are two from the fantastical Tilism-e-Hoshruba, the first by Musharraf Ali Farooqi and the other by Shahnaz Aijazuddin, as well Firduas Haider’s The Cow translated by Nighat Gandhi.

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[1] Gulzar, on the beauty of Urdu, recited at the 70^th birthday celebration of Jagjit Singh