Twilight In Delhi - Softcover

Ahmed Ali; Rupa Books

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8129112515 ISBN 13: 9788129112514

Publisher: Rupa Publications India, 2007

Synopsis

The sounds and smells of Delhi--the flutter of pigeons' wings, the call to prayer, the scent of jasmine and frying ghee--come to life in the novel whose detail E.M. Forster called "new and fascinating" upon its original publication in 1940. Reprinted with a revised introduction by the author, Twilight in Delhi is enacted between two revolutionary momen s of change, depicting the change of a way of life and culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Ahmed Ali (1908–1994) was born in Delhi, India. He taught at various Indian Universities from 1932–1946, and was Visiting Professor of English in China from 1947–48. Then, as a member of Pakistan’s Foreign Service, he established embassies in China and Morocco in 1950. Mr. Ali was well known for his scholarly work on the Qur’an.

From Publishers Weekly:

As literature, Ali's first novel is reasonably interesting, a sort of awkwardly written, Delhi-based Buddenbrooks . As history and cultural record, though, it is fascinating. Originally published in Britain in 1940 and making its first appearance in the U.S., Twilight concerns the upper-class Muslim merchant Mir Nihal and his extended family. Mir Nihal and his wife were young children during the 1857 Mutiny and the resultant brutality on both sides. Now, in 1911, two of their sons work in government offices and the third one wears English shirts and shoes--a sure sign of Delhi's imminent demise. Even the present crop of anti-British activists are beyond Mir Nihal's ken--"He was one of those who had believed in fighting with naked swords in their hands. The young only agitated." Mir Nihal's intense nationalism often seems ahistorical in retrospect--Hindu feeling ran just as strongly against Muslim "occupiers" once the hated English left. The real residual power of the mogul golden age is not political (the surviving descendants of Bahadur Shah are all beggars and cripples) but cultural, and Ali's book is first and foremost a tender record of traditional family ceremonies, of kite battles and the old aristocratic hobby of pigeon flying. The cries of the pigeon flyers are the ubi sunt accompanying Ali's portrayal of the parallel decline of Mir Nihal's family and of mogul Delhi.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rupa Publications India
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 8129112515
• ISBN 13: 9788129112514
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304