Birth— 1910 (Delhi)
Education—Aligharh Muslim University, Lucknow University,
Death—1994 (Karachi)

Bibliography

Novels

• Twilight in Delhi (1940)

Translations

(Urdu) Dilli ki Sham (Karachi: Akrash Press, 1963; Delhi: Jamia Millia, 1969);
(French) Crépuscule à Delhi (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1989);
(Spanish) Crepúsculo en Delhi (Barcelona: Ediciones Martínez Roca, 1991)

• Ocean of Night (1964)

• Rats and Diplomats (1985)

• When Love is Dead (substantially revised version of Ocean of Night; completed in 1988; unpublished).

Plays

• The Land of Twilight Produced in Lucknow, 1931

• Break the Chains
  Produced in Lucknow, 1932

Short Stories

• When the Funeral Was Crossing the Bridge – 1929
  Lucknow University Journal

• Mahvaton ki Ek Raat – 1931
  Humayun (Lahore)

• Angare – 1932
  With Sajjad Zaheer, Dr. Rashid Jahan, Mahmuduzaffar

• Sholey – 1934

• Our Lane – 1936

• Hamari Gali – 1940

• Morning in Delhi – 1940

• Qaid-khana – 1942

• Maut se Pahle – 1945

• Before Death – 1956

• The Prison-House – 1985

Poetry

• Purple Gold Mountain: Poems from China (1960)

• First Voices (1965)

• Selected Poems(1988)

Criticism

• Poetry: A Problem (1934)
  Allahabad University Studies, vol. XI, no. 11

• Art ka Taraqqi-Pasand Nazariya (1936)
  Anjuman Urdu Press Aurangabad, Deccan

• Maxim Gorky as a Short-Story Writer (1938)
  Lucknow University Journal

• Mr. Eliot’s Penny-World of Dreams (1941)
  Lucknow University

• Maxim Gorky as a Short-Story Writer (1938)
  Lucknow Univerity Journal

• Failure of an Intellect (1968)
  Akrash Press Karachi

• Illusion and Reality, the Art and Philosophy of Raja Rao (1968)
  Journal of Commonwealth Literature

• The Problem of Style and Technique in Ghalib (1969)

• The Golden Tradition: An Anthology of Urdu Poetry(1973)
  New York Columbia

Translations

• The Flaming Earth (1949)
  An anthology of selected Indonesian poems

• The Falcon and the Hunted Bird (1950)

• The Bulbul and the Rose. Karachi (1960)

• Ghalib: Selected Poems, (1969)

• Ghalib: Two Essays

• The Golden Tradition

• al-Qur’an: A Contemporary Translation into Urdu and English (1984)

Biography

Memoirs

Critique/Review of Works

Biography

Annotated CV
Born in July 1910 in Delhi, India; son of Syed Shujauddin (who worked in the civil administration) and Ahmad Kaniz Begam (Asghar) Ali;
Married Bilqees Jehan Begam, daughter of Barrister Rauf Ali (Syed) in 1950
Children: Eram, Orooj, Deed (sons), Shahana (daughter);
Died on 14 January 1994 in Karachi.

PROFESSOR AHMED ALI was born in Delhi in 1910, and educated at Aligarh and Lucknow universities, standing first-class and first in the order of merit in both B.A. (Honours), 1930 and M.A. English, 1931.

Professor Ahmed Ali taught at leading Indian universities including Lucknow and Allabbad from 1932-46 and joined the Bengal Senior Educational Service as Professor and Head of the English Department at Presidency College, Calcutta (1944-47). Professor Ahmed Ali was also BBC’s Representative and Director in India during 1942-44. He went to China in 1947 as British Council Visiting Professor of English at the National Central University at Nanking. There, he learnt Chinese and translated from Chinese poets, and gathered material for his book Muslim China; his house became a gathering of friends and China his second home. A year later India was divided and he came from China to Karachi in 1948; becoming Director of Foreign Publicity, Government of Pakistan. He joined the Pakistan Foreign Service at the insistence of Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, and the first file he received was marked “China” but was blank. He successfully established diplomatic relations with the Peoples Republic of China in record time and the Pakistani embassy in Peking in 1950; and the Embassy in Morocco, in 1958. With Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Surahwardy he visited China again in 1956.

Professor Ahmed Ali started his literary career at a very young age and became co-founder of the All-India Progressive Writers’ Movement and Association with the publication of Angare in 1932, a collection of short stories by four young friends, which was later banned by the British Government of India in March of 1933. Shortly afterwards Ahmed Ali and Mahmud-uz-Zaffar announced the formation of a “League of Progressive Authors”, which was later to expand and become the All-India Progressive Writers’ Association. Ahmed Ali presented his paper Art ka Taraqqi-Pasand Nazariya in its lnaugural Conference in 1936. A pioneer of the modem Urdu short story, Ahmed Ali’s works include collections of short stories: Sholay (1934); Hamari Gali (1940); Qaid Khana (1942); and Maut Se Pahle (1945).

Ahmed Ali achieved international fame with his novel Twilight in Delhi, which was first published by The Hogarth Press in London in 1940. It was widely acclaimed by critics, and hailed in India as a major literary event, and took the English speaking world by storm. It has since acquired the position of a legend. The leading critic, Maurice Collis, in Time and Tide of London wrote: “It may well be that we may not understand India until it is explained to us by Indian novelists of the first ability as it was that we understood nothing of Russia before we read Tolstoy, Turgenev and the others. Ahmed Ali may well be the vanguard of such a literary movement.” This judgement was reechoed by the Oxford History of India in 1958 when it said in reference to Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand and R.K. Narayan: “… it can be said that they have taken over from E.M. Forster and Edward Thompson the task of interpreting modern India to itself and the world.” Twilight in Delhi has been translated into many languages including French, Spanish and Italian. Its exemplary Urdu translation, Dilli ke Sham (1963), by Professor Ahmed Ali stalented wife, Bilqees Jehan, in the opinion of some critics restored the natural language to the book, but those who read it in the translation said it could not have been written in English while those who had read it in the original English said it was untransiatable. This curious controversy was put to an end by the American critic, Dr. David D. Anderson, when he said: “the novel transcends language as any substantial work of art ultimately must do…”.

Ahmed Ali’s other works include two novels, Ocean of Night and Of Rats and Diplomats; The Prison-House; Purple Gold Mountain; Selected Poems; Mr. Eliot’s Penny-world of Dreams; Muslim China; Ghalib: Selected Poems, The Problem of Style and Technique in Ghalib; and The Flaming Earth. Professor Ahmed Ali translated from Urdu, Persian, Indonesian, Chinese and Arabic. His translation of classical Urdu poetry, The Golden Tradition (Columbia University Press, 1973), makes an important contribution to the study of comparative literatures, and surveys in depth the literary and philosophical background of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries.

AI-Qur’an, A Contemporary Translation (Princeton University Press, Oxford University Press & Akrash) is Professor Ahmed Ali’s most outstanding contribution in the field of translation. Approved by eminent Islamic scholars, it has come to be recognised as the best of existing translations of the holy Qur’an. In the words of Dr. F. E. Peters of New York University: “Ahmed Ali’s work is clear, direct, and elegant – a combination of stylistic virtues almost never found in translations of the Qur’an. His is the best I have read.”

Professor Ahmed Ali was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Humanities at Michigan State University in 1975, Fulbright Visiting Professor of History at Western Kentucy University and Fulbright Visiting Professor of English at Southern Illinois University in 1978-79. He was made an Honorary Citizen by the State of Nebraska in 1979. He was Visiting Professor at the University of Karachi during 1977-79, which later conferred on him an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature in 1993.

A distinguished gentleman of refined taste and manners, Professor Ahmed Ali had a deep interest in sufism and a passion for Ghalib. His writings voiced concern over the decay of Muslim culture and the injustices of colonial powers. Proficient in several languages including French, Chinese, Persian and Qur’anic Arabic, he captivated audiences by his eloquent speech and expression. Steeped in tradition but progressive at heart, he was equally at home in the East and the West. Professor Ahmed Ali had travelled widely, and was an avid collector of Chinese porcelain and paintings, Gandhara art and other antiques. He rubbed shoulders with kings and dignitaries and among his circle of friends were E. M. Forster, George Orwell, Virginia Wolf and the Bloomsbury Group, Han Su Yin, Tien Chen, Sarojini Naidu, Laxmi Pandit, Raja Rao, Jamni Roy, Kunwar Natwar Singh and the Surahwardy family; Mohsin Abdullah and Laurence Brander from Aligarh and Lucknow were his dear friends to the end.

Professor Ahmed Ali’s career spanned the better part of the 20th century and he put us in touch with both our past and our present. His renderings of literatures of South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Far East established links which were not yet known, and are remembered respectfully. His creative writings draw wide interest and are an enduring contribution to international letters. He was elected a Founding Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Letters in 1979 and was awarded the Sitara-i-lmtiaz in 1980 in recognition of his contribution to letters and the nation.
Professor Ahmed Ali died in Karachi on 14th January 1994.

(Courtesy: Orooj Ahmed Ali and Shahana Ahmed Ali)

Education
1930 B. A. (Honors, English), Muslim University, Aligarh.
1931 M.A. (English), Lucknow University, Lucknow.

Career
1931–1932 Lecturer, Lucknow University.
1933–1934 Lecturer, Agra College.
1934–1936 Lecturer, Allahabad University.
1936–1941 Lecturer, Lucknow University.
1939–1942 Co-Editor, with Iqbal Singh, Indian Writing.
1942–1944 Representative and Director, BBC New Delhi.
1942–1944 Co-Editor, with Raja Rao, Tomorrow.
1944–1947 Professor and Head of the English Department, Presidency
College, Calcutta.
1947–1948 British Council Visiting Professor, National Central
University of China, Nanking.
1948–1949 Director of Foreign Publicity, Government of Pakistan, Karachi.
1950–1951 Editor, Pakistan P.E.N. Miscellany.
1950–1960 Pakistan Foreign Service: Counsellor and Chargé d’Affaires in
China and Morocco (responsible for establishing diplomatic relations of Pakistan with the Peoples Republic of China and with Morocco).
1960–1970 Public Relations Adviser to Business and Industry.
1970– Chairman and Managing Director, Lomen Fabrics Limited.
1975 (Summer) Visiting Professor of Humanities, Michigan State University. 1975 (Fall) Gave lectures at numerous academic insitutions in the US, among them: University of Texas at Austin, University of A r i z o n a , S o u t h e r n Illinois University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Western Michigan University, University of Chicago, and Columbia University.
1977–1979 Visiting Professor, University of Karachi.
1978 (Fall) Fulbright Visiting Professor of History, Western Kentucky
Univerity
1979 (Spring) Fulbright Visiting Professor of English, Southern Illinois
University; also attended several international seminars and conferences and gave lectures at Oakland University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, and Columbia University.

Memoirs

Ahmed Ali in Conversation: An Excerpt from an Interview
Carlo Coppola
The following excerpt is from an extensive interview with the late Ahmed Ali conducted by Carlo Coppola on  August 1975 in Rochester, Michigan, during Professor Ali’s initial visit to the United States. The entire interview, over sixty pages in length, will be published in a special Ahmed Ali issue of the Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2 (Summer–Fall 1993), which will appear in 1995. The interview roughly follows the chronology of Ahmed Ali’s life. This excerpt deals with the publication of his Twilight in Delhi. All footnotes have been provided by the Interviewer.

Face of a Friend: Ahmed Ali 1910-1994
K. Natwar Singh
Ahmed Ali belonged to that rare breed of men who are straightforward in their dealings with themselves. He was humane, humorous, warm- hearted, had a gift for friendship and was so upright that it was impossible to withhold admiration. Voltaire has written somewhere: “Aimer et penser: C’est la veritable vie des esprits” (“To love and to reflect: that is the true life of the spirit”).

Critique/Review 

Ahmed Ali (1910-1994):
Bridges and Links East and West
Carlo Coppola
Ahmed Ali, the distinguished Pakistani short-story writer, novelist,
poet, translator, critic, anthologist, teacher, diplomat, and businessman, died on Friday, 14 January 1994, in Karachi. He had been in ill health for several years. Writing in both Urdu and English, Ali produced a number of innovative literary and scholarly works which have received acclaim from critics in both South Asia and the West.

Revisiting Ahmed Ali: Twilight in Delhi (1940)
Amardeep Singh
Ahmed Ali’s career is one of the best ones I know to illustrate the connections between the style and ideology of the Progressive Writers’ Movement and more experimental and lyrical modes of mid-20th century writing in India and Pakistan. Ali is best known for his English-language novel, Twilight in Delhi (first published in London by Hogarth Press in 1940), but he wrote several other novels in English, as well as a number of short stories and plays in Urdu in the 1930s.

Professor Ahmed Ali
Alamgir Hashmi
Novelist, translator, poet and critic, Ahmed Ali died on 14 January 1994, thus concluding a most important and eventful chapter of our cultural and literary history. Ahmed Ali, popularly known as Professor Ahmed Ali, was an epoch-making personality. He was the father of modern Pakistani literature; in fact, his work helped shape twentieth- century South Asian literature in both English and Urdu.

Ahmed Ali: the borders of language
Mehr Afshan Farooqi
Unpredictably, Ahmed Ali’s birth centenary year (2010) ignited more than cursory interest in his work. The peculiar thing about such celebrations is the particularity of choices. Who gets selected for the fanfare is often pushed more by political exigencies than love and respect for the creative writer.1 Nevertheless, it is remarkable that Ahmed Ali who suffered step treatment from his Angaray brethren and was discounted from the fold of Indian literature (because he relocated to Pakistan) was finally given his due by the Indian government’s premier literary institution, the Sahitya Akademi.

The Truths of Fictions
By Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
It gives me great pleasure to be here this morning to deliver the fourth Ahmed Ali Memorial Lecture. I am particularly delighted that this opportunity comes to me in the centenary year of Ahmed Ali’s birth. The pleasure is even more enhanced by the fact that though I never met Ahmed Ali, this morning I address him in spirit through his son Uruj who is among us at this lecture today.

A Novel by Ahmed Ali
By Muhammad Hasan Askari
It was in 1940, or 1941 that Ahmed Ali’s English novel Twilight in Delhi was published.1 Most of the current Urdu writers were then still studying for their bachelor’s or master’s degrees. The Progressive Writers’ Movement was then young. Enthusiasm still prevailed and literary efforts were looked at with admiration and respect. Islamic religious sanctions had not yet been applied to literature. Ahmed Ali had not yet been discarded by the progressives; in fact, he was counted among the pioneers of the new literature.