LAHORE: The Weary Generations (Udaas Naslein) has remained in print for more than 50 years and will be available for another hundred years, said iconic Urdu novelist Abdullah Hussein’s daughter Nur Fatima at the launch of the a new edition of English translation of novel (translated into English by Hussein himself) at Liberty Books on Friday.

Also part of the panel was Raza Naeem, an academic and translator who has written the introduction to The Weary Generations. He is working on a translation of Qaid, another novel by Hussein.

The event was moderated by novelist Bilal Tanweer who began the session by asking Fatima about the reasons for the endurance and popularity of the novel even after 50 years. Nur Fatima said the novel had stood the test of time because what Hussein had written was nothing but sheer truth.

Naeem added to it by saying that in his opinion the novel also survived because Hussein was illiterate when it came to conventional Urdu and therefore when he wrote the novel, he made up words which he couldn’t understand. “It was this creative use of Urdu that assured the novel’s longevity. Only someone who loved language could write a novel like that.”

Naeem said Hussein shared the inventiveness of language with other prominent novelists like Anthony Burgess in The Clockwork Orange and William Golding in Lord of the Flies.

When asked about the life and times of Hussein, Nur Fatima said that Hussein had a prodigious memory and when he was posted to a remote cement factory in Daudkhel, The Weary Generations came about ‘out of sheer boredom’.

Naeem read extracts from the novel showing how racist the British were to peasants was in the colonial India.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2017