Joginder Paul’s iconic Urdu novel now in English

By Asia Samachar Team | INDIA |

Joginder Paul’s iconic Urdu novel “Ek Boond Lahoo Ki” has been translated into English.

A Drop of Blood, as translated by Snehal Shingavi, was recently as an ebook was released by Penguin Random House India.

Paul is regarded as one of the greatest Urdu novelists of the 20th century and wrote the book in Nairobi in the late fifties when Nehruvian socialism was very much in the air in India and the author was greatly affected by class inequalities witnessed in Kenya, reports PTI.

The book has been described as a powerful satire about institutional corruption and greed cleverly exploring the insidious ways in which the mighty habitually prey upon the vulnerable. He was a penniless refugee when he migrated to Kenya after the Partition of 1947.

The book was published in 1962 at the dying end of the Nehruvian era, but expressed some of its most deeply held pieties: a socialist dispensation for India, tolerance of all religious expression, a hope for the uplift of women, and modernised and educated life for all of its citizens, the report added.