Ebook: Poems by Faiz

Faiz is one of the few poets of our age who have been prominent in public affaits. The events of his life have been interwoven with those of the last decades of British rule in India, the partition of India and Pakistan and the subsequent troubled history of Pakistan's efforts to build a new national life. Faiz wrote some of his best known poems while a political prisoner. He has always been on the side of progress and against repression, and this has helped to make his work popular in other countries, for instance in the U.S.S.R. where all his poems have appeared in translation.

The present volume aims to present the best of Faiz's work and has been designed to appeal to a variety of readers. V.G. Kiernan has provided a verse translation, which conveys the wonderful atmosphere and spirit of Faiz's writing. Below the verse translation on each page is set a literal line by line translation and an exact transliteration of the Urdu, based on a system carefully evolved from the most accurate and widely accepted practices. For the benefit of students of the language, in Pakistan, India and elsewhere, and for Urdu speaking families resident in Britain, the Urdu text has been set facing the transliteration and translations. The text has been transcribed by a distinguished calligrapher of Lahore in a style designed to combine beauty with perfect legibility. Mr. Kiernan has also provided a detailed Introduction, describing Faiz's life and work and the literary tradition inherited from the Persian poetry of the Muslim invaders of India.

Faiz chose the poems for this volume himself, and discussed all the renderings, and the Introduction, with the translator.