The Best Of Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Faiz Ahmed Faiz is the most famous contemporary Urdu poet of the twentieth century, appealing to both the common man and the elite connoisseurs of poetry. His ghazals reflect a strong influence of the Persian style and diction, earning him the reputation as the inheritor of the tradition of Ghalib, while several of them are written in a simple conversational style dealing with the problems of the common man. Faiz was a committed poet who regarded poetry as a vehicle of serious thought, rather than just a pleasurable pastime, and often used it to champion the cause of socialistic humanism. Born in Sialkot in 1911, Faiz began his career as a lecturer in English but soon turned to journalism, where he excelled, rising to the post of editor of The Pakistan Times. In 1951, the Pakistan government sentenced him to four years imprisonment on the charges of complicity in a failed coup attempt known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case. While in jail, he wrote two of his greatest works, Dasta-e-Saba and Zindan-Nama. During the regime of Zia-ul-Haq, he was forced into exile to Beirut, returning to Pakistan in 1982, and passing away two years later. This book offers a selection of the best of Faiz's ghazals and nazms, along with their English translations and transliterations, allowing readers to enjoy the beauty and richness of the Urdu language as they read the English transliteration, with the translation providing an understanding of the meaning, including all its subtle nuances.