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Hassan's State of Affairs cover

Critically Acclaimed Writer Mirza Athar Baig Sheds Light on Hassan’s State of Affairs in His Audacious New Novel!

So brash, so ambitious, and yet so accomplished.

– Mohammad Hanif

Stylish, playful, profound and wild, this is a reading experience of extremes, written and translated with the kind of verve most of us can only dream of. I loved it.

– Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young

Bestselling and critically acclaimed, Mirza Athar Baig is one of the most important contemporary Urdu novelists.

Hassan’s State of Affairs, his first book to be translated into English, is a surreal ride through Pakistan. It follows an accountant, Hassan, and a group of filmmakers, Masquerade Productions, who are working on Pakistan’s first surrealist film, titled This Film Cannot Be Made. The film’s production inevitably runs into hurdles that escalate from the comic to the horrific, and the text itself explodes into multiple storylines, genres and characters, bending language and form as it traces the rise of religious intolerance and totalitarianism and their stifling effect on life and art.

The result is an entirely new kind of novel.

Brilliantly translated by Haider Shahbaz, this dazzling, audacious book is a fitting introduction to one of the most exciting writers working in any language today.

You hold in your hands a bizarre brainbox of a book in an extraordinary translation. Brace yourself – this book will take you on a wild ride through the labyrinthine world of one of contemporary Urdu’s most fascinating and incomparable writers.

– Bilal Tanweer, author of The Scatter Here Is Too Great

AUTHOR BIOS

 

Mirza Athar Baig is one of the most important contemporary writers in the Urdu language. A veteran professor of postmodern and postcolonial philosophy at Government College University, Lahore, Mirza announced his entry into fiction with avant-garde works that completely reshaped the field of contemporary Urdu fiction. He is the author of three novels – Ghulam Bagh, Sifr Se Aik Tak and Hassan Ki Surat-e-Haal – a collection of ‘anti-stories’, and more than a hundred plays for television.

Haider Shahbaz has a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He was the 2016-17 Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia, and received an ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) Travel Fellowship in 2016 for his work on Baig’s fiction. He lives in Lahore.

About HarperCollins India:

HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2000 titles across 10 imprints. HarperCollins India authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, the DSC Prize, the New India Foundation Award, the Atta Galatta Prize, the Shakti Bhatt Prize, the Publishing Next Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet.  HarperCollins India is also the only publisher to have been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award three times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016 and 2018.

 

Royal Paperback | pp 616 | Rs. 699

For interviews, reviews and excerpts,

please email or contact

Jaseya.Fazili@harpercollins.co.in

hassans state of affairs

Hassan's State of Affairs
About the Book - Hassan's State of Affairs

Bestselling and critically acclaimed, Lahore-based Mirza Athar Baig is one of the most important contemporary Urdu writers. Hassan's State of Affairs -- his first book to be translated into English -- is a surreal ride through Pakistan. It follows an…

About the Author - Mirza Athar Baig

MIRZA ATHAR BAIG is one of the most important contemporary writers in the Urdu language. A veteran professor of postmodern and postcolonial philosophy at Government College University, Lahore, Mirza announced his entry into fiction with avant-garde works that completely reshaped…

About the Author - Haider Shahbaz

To read more, order your copy of Hassan's State of Affairs, by Mirza Athar Baig | Haider Shahbaz today!

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