Reviews for Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History

The average rating for Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-05-15 00:00:00 John Bingley Ralph Russell’s compact, appealingly personal history of Urdu literature is informed without being pedantic, balanced but up-front about the author’s own predilections, and sympathetic to the subjects he writes about without abandoning a critical stance entirely (his critiques of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, and well-rounded assessment of Iqbal’s national vision for Pakistan, stand out as especially nuanced). I appreciated his description of his own initial difficulties in learning to enjoy the conventions of the ghazal, and his treatment of the populist, didactic ambitions of The Progressive Writers’ Movement in the 1930s does a great job of judging the work by its own standards. (The portrait of Prem Chand is particularly helpful). Assembled from a patchwork of papers and occasional essays, the book doesn’t aim for anything like completion. But as a rough and ready introduction to the Urdu literary tradition, it’s a great resource to start with. Russell's bio reads almost like a caricature of the modern British Orientalist--Classics at Cambridge, war service in India, a career at The School of African and Oriental Studies in London--but he was also a lifelong Communist whose political sympathies, like those of Raymond Williams or E.P. Thompson, remind you how potent that fusion between English dispassion and Leftist commitment could be.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-01 00:00:00 Steve Hinkle A well written, informative book. It gave me a fresh perspective on something I think of, and cherish, as my own heritage. There were times when I disagreed with Mr. Russell's opinion of an author, or with his interpretation of a certain story or a verse, but that wasn't something that left me distraught. For one, the nature of Literature as a genre allows for such discrepancies to exist. Secondly, the author is (of course!) much more acquainted with Urdu Literature, and with the material pertaining to it, than me (reproachful, I know); so, I took this experience, more than anything else, as my education by an expert - and overall enjoyed the process :)