With an essay by Kevin Power.

    It contains his earliest poems - in nazm, ghazal and qita form - that set him on course to becoming the greatest and most-read Urdu poet of the 20th century.

    In this novel, he tells of Obuechina, the only brother of six older sisters, prize pupil in the village school, apple of his doting mother's eye, eight years old and hopelessly spoilt. In a vain attempt to salvage his character, his father decides he must be sent away as a servant to a schoolmaster with a dragon of a wife. Obu goes - and comes back very different.