About the Book

THIS MASTERPIECE HAS A STORY WITHIN A STORY
The narrator who opens it goes to Gilgitia Til Mas to research whether two multinational firms could set up steel plants there. He finds out that years before this, an international archaeological institute had sent a six-member team to this region, where a small city named Girgita Til Mas existed about two hundred years ago. It was particularly renowned for a mental asylum. The city was purposefully submerged in water for the construction of a hydroelectric dam by the central government.
However, due to the ecological imbalance, all the rivers in the region either dried up or changed their courses. Mountainous terrain transformed into plains, and the power plant became as useless as a limb without function, so it was demolished. The city resurfaced with its ruins and debris. It was established that a mental asylum existed at this site once. The narrator found a manuscript among its ruins, which is at the heart of this novel.
Interested in ancient manuscripts, the narrator sets out to decipher a madman's diary, a man who suffered a severe injury to his head in his mother's womb at the hands of his violent father. This diary is the story within the story. As it unravels, our second narrator's relationship with his abusive father, his constant companion, the idea of self-harm, the two women in his life, and the terrifying void that swirls around him, introduces us to the most striking aspect of Khalid Jawed's writing: the crackling mix of metaphysics and banality.

About the Author

Khalid Jawed is one of the leading Urdu novelists of our times. He is the author of fifteen works of fiction and non-fiction, and is a recipient of the Katha Award, the Upendranath Ashk Award and the UP Urdu Academy Award. He is a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University.
Khalid Jawed was awarded the JCB Prize for Literature (2022) for the English translation of his book Nemat Khana translated as The Paradise of Food.

About the Translator

Recipient of Delhi Urdu Academy and Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy Translation Awards, A. Naseeb Khan is a bilingual poet, translator and author. His publications include translations of over eight hundred couplets of Ghalib's Urdu poetry, included in