Four Walls and a Black Veil [Hardcover]

Fahmida Riaz (Author), Aamer Hussein (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2005

Four Walls and a Black Veil contains a representative selection of Fahmida Riaz's poetry. It tracks her emotional and intellectual journey from a lovelorn childhood to her deep commitment to human dignity, peace, and secularism in the Indo-Pak subcontinent.

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About the Author

Born in Meerut, India, Fahmida Riaz is among the front rank of Urdu poets. From the outset she refused to be typecast as a woman poet and conform to what are generally regarded as the confines of 'proper' literary and creative traditions of feminine poetry. In her choice of themes, diction, allusion, and similes she broke out of the inhibitions imposed on her gender. This was evident from the contents of her first collection of verse, Patthar Ki Zaban (published in 1967). With the publication of her second collection, Badan Dareeda, she emerged as a full-fledged iconoclast. The poem, "Badan Dareeda", which carried the same title as the collection can be regarded as something of a landmark, putting her in the same category as Ismat Chughtai who wrote the short story Lihaf. Fahmida Riaz used her femininity as a weapon to expose the prudishness of the male-oriented traditions of Urdu poetry. She has since published four more collections of her verse, and she is also the author of several short stories and novels in Urdu. Fahmida Riaz is also an unrelenting social critic and has been active in several human rights movements. She was among the writers who campaigned against General Ziaul Haq's military rule and the execution of Z. A. Bhutto and had to suffer the wrath of the authorities and a period of self-exile. She has travelled widely and lectured at universities and cultural forums in England and the USA. She was given the Himmett-Hellman award by Human Rights Watch, New York, in 1997.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 156 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; Bilingual edition (January 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195977114
• ISBN-13: 978-0195977110
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,149,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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