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Afzal Ahmed Syed

Afzal Ahmed Syed (  ) is a contemporary Urdu poet and translator, known for his mastery of both classical and modern Urdu poetic expression.[1]

Born in Ghazipur, India, in 1946, Afzal Ahmed Syed has lived since 1976 in Karachi, Pakistan, where he works as an entomologist.[2] He is the author of the modern nazm collections    (An Arrogated Past, 1984),      (Death Sentence in Two Languages, 1990), and     (Rococo and Other Worlds, 2000). Another collection of classical ghazals is titled   (The Dark Pavilion, 1988).

Syed’s poetry was anthologized in An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets (New York: OUP, 1999). The Wesleyan University Press Poetry Series has published a selection of Syed's poetry in translation, titled Rococo and Other Worlds in 2010, which features poetry from his three Urdu nazm collections.

Syed has translated a wide and important body of works by contemporary poets, playwrights and novelists. He was the one of the first Urdu translators of Gabriel García Márquez and Jean Genet. His work has been widely published in leading Urdu literary periodicals such as Shabkhoon, Aaj, and Dunyazad.[3]


Bibliography  
Original works  
In Urdu  
  :  - An Arrogated Past (Karachi: Aaj Ki Kitaben, 1984)
 :  - The Dark Pavilion (Karachi: Aaj Ki Kitaben, 1988)
    :  - Death Sentence in Two Languages (Karachi: Aaj Ki Kitaben, 1990)
    :  - Rococo and Other Worlds (Karachi: Aaj Ki Kitaben, 2000)
In English translation  
Rococo and Other Worlds: Selected Poetry of Afzal Ahmed Syed, Translated from Urdu by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Translations by Afzal Ahmed Syed  
Poetry  
Miroslav Holub (Czech), Yehuda Amichai (Hebrew), Dunya Mikhail (Arabic), Tadeusz Borowski (Polish), Zbigniew Herbert (Polish), Jan Prokop (Polish), Tadeusz Rozewicz (Polish), Wislawa Szymborska (Polish), Aleksander Wat (Polish), Marin Sorescu (Romanian), Osip Mandelstam (Russian), Orhan Veli (Turkish)

Fiction  
Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of A Death Foretold.

Plays  
Jean Genet, The Maids. Goran Stefanovski, Sarajevo: Tales from a City



Afzal Ahmed Syed (born 1946) holds a unique place among contemporary poets of the Urdu language. He is an acknowledged master of both classical and modern Urdu poetic expression, and a leading proponent of linguistic experimentation. He is the author of three modern nazm genre collections titled    (An Arrogated Past, 1984),      (Death Sentence in Two Languages, 1990), and     (Rococo and Other Worlds, 2000). His ghazal collection is titled   (The Dark Pavilion, 1988). The Wesleyan University Press Poetry Series will publish his selection titled Rococo and Other Worlds in Spring 2010. He is editing a representative selection of contemporary Urdu poetry for the Urdu Project.

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