Afzal Ahmed Syed

Afzal Ahmed Syed, born in 1946, is a leading Urdu poet and translator. He witnessed civil wars in Dhaka in 1971 and in Beirut from 1974 to 1976. Living in Karachi since 1976, he has published three collections of prose poems: ‘Chheeni Hui Tareekh (1983), Do Zabanon mein ‘Saza-e-Maut’ (1990) and ‘Rococo aur Doosri Dunyaen’ (2000), and one collection of ghazals: ‘Khaima-e-Siyah’ (1988). His collected works were published as ‘Mitti ki Kaan’ in 2009. In 2010, the Wesleyan University Press, USA, published a selection of his poems, ‘Rococo and Other Worlds’, translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. Later, the English translation of his complete work was published in India by the same title. Translations of his poetry have also appeared in Sindhi, Hindi, Bengali, Arabic and German. He is known for his mastery of the Urdu poetic expression in both classic and modern style. He frequently translates from English and Persian. From English he has translated fiction of renowned writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jean Genet, Ismael Kadare, etc. and a large number of poets of the world. His translations of the ‘Sabak-e-Hindi’ poets were published as ‘Bada-e-Doshina’ by Aks Publishers and the complete Persian works of Mir Taqi Mir as ‘Divan-e-Mir Farsi: Urdu Tarjuma’ by Oxford University Press. For his literary work, he was awarded Pride of Performance in 2024. He currently teaches Urdu at Habib University.