News & Events 1 Abdullah Hussein s novel Udas NasleN has been translated into Chinese 2 A fine addition to our small corpus of books on modern Urdu literature is Muzaffar Iqbal s study Abdullah Hussein From Sad Generations to a Lonely Tiger (Madison 1985) Abdullah Hussein is certainly the most significant fiction writer in Urdu to appear since 1947 and Muzaffar Iqbal s book is the first in any language to discuss at length Hussein s novels and short fiction Iqbal by training a physical scientist is himself a novelist and writes literary criticism with much sensitivity His book is available from the South Asian Studies Center University of Wisconsin 1220 Linden Drive Madison Wl 53706 3 Khushwant Singh is writing a new novel which is about Delhi Two long excerpts from it appeared in the Illustrated Weekly of India (31 March 1985 pp 36 43 7 April 1985 pp 36 43) Their protagonist is Mir Taqi Mir whose sexual and other exploits are narrated with Singh s usual gusto Singh has used Mir s autobiography Zikr'e Mir in his usual manner 4 Anita Desai s latest novel In Custody (London Heineman 1984) is about an aging Urdu poet and his young academic admirer The aging Muslim poet of a language whose future is still uncertain in India behaves like a curmudgeon except when face to face with his second wife who has her own literary ambitions The young Hindu admirer dreams of literary fame but finds himself restricted by his job at a petty college and his non-literary wife This is a novel about relationships and varieties of dependencies Partly comical and partly serious it is a good enough read 5 Syed Nur Ahmad s well regarded book on the politics of the Punjab Mar^al L§ se MarSa/ La tak has been translated into English as From Martial Law to Martial Law (Westview Press 1985) The translation is by Mahmud All edited and revised by Craig Baxter of Juniata College 6 The owner of the only shroud shop in Nagpur is Farog Nakkash a man in his fifties Since 1959 he has been composing a mammoth poem in six volumes out of which four are ready The poem is called ^ahnama-e Hind and the four finished volumes bring the story of India from the time of the Mahabharata to the end of the Mughal period They contain some 11 000 couplets Unfortunately no volume has yet been published (Society [Bombay] June 1984 p 47) 7 Haydarabad State under the Nizams 1724 1948 A Bibliography of Periodical Literature by Omar Khalidi Aga Khan Librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a new publication available from the Haydarabad Historical Society 2462 Dalton Street Wichita KA 67210 The price is $30 00 143