Shamsur Rahman Faruqi tells the fascinating story of how Urdu grew into one of the subcontinent s great literary languages. In doing so, he also takes us back to the intertwined beginnings of Hindi and Urdu, questioning many of the familiar assumptions about where the two languages came from and how they developed.

Drawing on a remarkable range of poetry and literary traditions, Faruqi explores the major forms of Urdu poetry and the writers who shaped them. But this is much more than a history of poets and poetry. It is also the story of a culture taking shape-of changing tastes, ideas, influences and ways of seeing the world.

Faruqi was never afraid to question received wisdom, and this book is at its most compelling when he does precisely that. He challenges long-held beliefs about Urdu s origins and literary history and offers fresh, sometimes provocative, ways of understanding them.

Today, when language is so closely tied to questions of identity, belonging and cultural memory, the book has acquired a new resonance. It reminds us that languages do not grow within neat boundaries: they meet, borrow, change and flourish through the people who speak, write and dream in them.

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