Syed Kashif Raza
Syed Kashif Raza— poet, fiction writer, and translator—has authored seven books including two volumes of poetry and a novel. His first novel Char Darvesh aur Aik Katchwa (Four Dervishes and a Tortoise) won the UBL prize for fiction in 2020 and was short-listed for the KLF prize for Urdu Literature in the same year. His poetry collections Muhabbat ka Mahall-e-Wuqu and Mamnu Mausamon ki Kitab were published in 2003 and 2012, respectively. His poems have been translated into English, Arabic, Hindi, and Sindhi and were also published in the prestigious Portland Review. He has translated into Urdu Muhammad Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes, Arundhati Roy’s Azadi, and Maniza Naqvi’s A Guest in the House. He has edited a translation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm by Dr Jameel Jalibi and added to it translations of some important essays. He has recently compiled a bilingual anthology with Naila Mehmood about the representation of the corona experience in literature and arts. Syed Kashif Raza has also translated the works of Noam Chomsky, Milan Kundera, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Isabel Allende and others into Urdu. Raza writes blogs for ‘Aik Rozan’ ‘Laltain’ and ‘Humsub’ websites. He has written socio-political articles, literary essays, and book reviews for Dawn, The News International, Jang and many literary magazines. He is currently working on multiple projects such as compiling/editing the translations of Eqbal Ahmed’s works; working on a third volume of his poetry; and writing travelogues. Raza is a broadcast journalist by profession and works for Geo News as Executive Producer.