Qurratulain Hyder

Qurrat-ul-Ain Haider (; January 20, 1928, – August 21, 2007) was an influential Urdu novelist and short story writer, an academic, and a journalist. One of the most outstanding literary names in Urdu literature, she is most known for her magnum opus, Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire), a novel first published in Urdu in 1959, from Lahore, Pakistan, that stretches from 4th century BC to post partition of India except the Muslim period specially Mughal period that gave birth to Ganga-Jamuni culture.Jnanpith, p. 42 Popularly known as "Ainee Apa" among her friends and admirers, she was the daughter of the famous writer Sajjad Haidar Yildarim, (1880–1943). Her mother Nazar Zahra (who wrote at first as Bint-i-Nazrul Baqar and later as Nazar Sajjad Hyder) (1894–1967) was also a writer and protegee of Muhammadi Begam and her husband Syed Mumtaz Ali, who published her first novel.

She received the 1967 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu for Patjhar Ki Awaz (Short stories), 1989 Jnanpith Award for Akhire Shab Ke Humsafar, and the highest award of the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1994. She also received the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India in 2005.

Biography

Born on January 20, 1926 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, (though her family were from Nehtaur, UP), Qurrat-ul-Ain Hyder is...
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