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What Will You Give for This Beauty?

What Will You Give for This Beauty?

Ali Akbar Natiq
,
Ali Madeeh Hashmi
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Qaim Deen sneaks across the Sutlej, into India, to steal cattle-braving cobras, wild boars and the border patrol-and gives generously of his earnings to those in need. Young Nauman’s forbidden love for Nuzhat leads him to seek refuge in a holy place, at a terrible cost to his family. Maulvi Abdur Rahman and his neighbour’s bull terrier engage in a hilarious and unrelenting battle of wits. Could Kareeman’s beauty, which hits the village like a storm, be the salvation of Ghafoora the Dimwit?

Ali Natiq brings vividly alive the world of the Punjab countryside, with its undercurrent of violence and poverty, through feuds and feasts, hunts and marriages, mobs and floods, elopements and gossip. Acrobats, holy men, thieves, peasants, landowners, masons and courtesans populate the stories of his virtuoso debut collection What Will You Give for This Beauty? Possessed of dark irony and a searing moral vision, Ali Akbar Natiq is a storyteller of exceptional talent and manifest power.

Imprint: India Penguin

Published: Apr/2016

ISBN: 9780143426080

Length : 224 Pages

MRP : ₹299.00

What Will You Give for This Beauty?

Ali Akbar Natiq
,
Ali Madeeh Hashmi

Qaim Deen sneaks across the Sutlej, into India, to steal cattle-braving cobras, wild boars and the border patrol-and gives generously of his earnings to those in need. Young Nauman’s forbidden love for Nuzhat leads him to seek refuge in a holy place, at a terrible cost to his family. Maulvi Abdur Rahman and his neighbour’s bull terrier engage in a hilarious and unrelenting battle of wits. Could Kareeman’s beauty, which hits the village like a storm, be the salvation of Ghafoora the Dimwit?

Ali Natiq brings vividly alive the world of the Punjab countryside, with its undercurrent of violence and poverty, through feuds and feasts, hunts and marriages, mobs and floods, elopements and gossip. Acrobats, holy men, thieves, peasants, landowners, masons and courtesans populate the stories of his virtuoso debut collection What Will You Give for This Beauty? Possessed of dark irony and a searing moral vision, Ali Akbar Natiq is a storyteller of exceptional talent and manifest power.

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback
Ebooks

Ali Akbar Natiq

Ali Akbar Natiq is among the foremost voices writing in Urdu today. He is the author of fifteen books
across the genres of fiction, poetry, biography and literary criticism. His work enjoys the rare honour of being both critically acclaimed and bestselling. It has been translated into English, Hindi and German, and featured in New York Times and Granta. His collection of short stories, Qaim Din (Oxford University Press, 2012), was awarded the UBL-Jang Literary Excellence Award in 2013. In addition to being an author, he is an accomplished architect.


Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator whose work was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and Best Small Fictions. She has translated three works from Urdu and French into English, and her own fiction and poetry are forthcoming 2024 onwards. Her writings have been widely published in reputed journals like Asymptote, The Scores, Wild Court, Poetry Birmingham and The Aleph Review. In addition, she is a collaborator with the UK-based translation collective, Shadow Heroes.

Ali Madeeh Hashmi

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