The dancing girl
Subtitle: a novel
By: by Hasan Shah ; translated by Qurratulain Hyder.
Publisher: New Directions Pub. Corp.
Published: 1993
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 111
Subjects: Hasan Shah, 18th cent. -- Fiction.; India -- Fiction.
Description: Written in 1790, Hasan Shah's autobiographical romance, The Dancing Girl, is remarkable for both its lyrical prose and its fine recreation of a time, a place, and a culture - India in the 1780s, a tolerant, affable era before the full establishment of British colonial rule. The Dancing Girl tells of the doomed love of Hasan Shah (aide-de-camp to a British officer) and Khanum Jan (a courageous and gifted dancer of the courtesan caste) whose secret marriage could not prevent their separation. At Khanum Jan's death, her grief-stricken husband turned his raw emotion into a surprisingly modern, first-person narrative "without realizing", as leading Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder observes in the foreword to her translation (from the 1893 Urdu translation of the original Persian), "that he had become a pioneer of the modern Indian novel."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-111).
Originally written in Persian under the title "Nashtar" ; based on Urdu translated version.