ABOUT THIS BOOK

Born in India and considered the leading poet on the South Asian subcontinent, Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) was a two-time Nobel nominee and winner of the 1962 Lenin Peace Prize. His evening readings in Hindi/Urdu-speaking regions drew thousands of listeners. Associated with the Communist party in his youth, Faiz became an outspoken poet in opposition to the Pakistani government. This volume offers a selection of Faiz's poetry in a bilingual Urdu/English edition with a new introduction by poet and translator Agha Shahid Ali.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

FAIZ AHMED FAIZ was not only a prize-winning poet, but also a professor of English Literature, a distinguished editor, and a major figure in the Afro-Asian writer's movement. AGHA SHAHID ALI is on the MFA poetry faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His most recent books of poetry are A Nostalgist's Map of America and The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems.

REVIEWS

“Though privileged by birth and education, Faiz was, by both his words and his actions, a champion of the world's voiceless and suffering peoples. . . . He wrote eloquently of the human aspiration for freedom, dignity, and, of course, love. . . . Ali's may well be the touchstone for English translations of Faiz to date.”—South Asia

“Agha Shahid Ali has done with these Faiz poems what we hope from any translation: he has brought the original closer to us, made it possible for us to have a sense of what it may be like to read the poetry of a great talent from a language and tradition very far from our own habits.”—W.S. Merwin

“[Faiz] was read and listened to both by the literary elite and by the masses. . . . He was, I think, one of the greatest poets of this century, and was honored as such throughout the major part of Asia and Africa.”—Edward W. Said

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Last Night
2. Don't Ask Me for That Love Again
3. Ghazal
4. Solitude
5. Ghazal
6. Ghazal
7. Ghazal
8. August 1952
9. A Prison Evening
10. A Prison Daybreak
11. Ghazal
12. Fragrant Hands
13. Ghazal
14. City of Lights
15. Ghazal
16. We Who Were Executed
17. Evening
18. Solitary Confinement
19. Ghazal
20. Poem
21. Two Elegies

Appointments
The Rain of Stones Is Finished

22. Before You Came
23. Be Near Me
24. Vista
25. In Search of Vanished Blood
26. The City from Here
27. Black Out
28. Let Me Think
29. THe Heart Gives Up
30. Stay Away from Me (Bangladesh I)
31. Bangladesh II
32. Desire
33. Evening in Ashkabaad
34. Wash the Blood off Your Feet
35. On My Return from Dhaka (Bangladesh III)
36. It Is Spring Again
37. A Letter from Prison
38. For Vera
39. A Night in the Desert
40. So Bring the Order for My Execution
41. You Tell Us What To Do