Regret: Two Novellas

Ikramullah

Translated from Urdu by Faruq Hassan and Muhammad Umar Memon

Penguin Modern Classics

264 pages, Rs.299

Ikramullah, a Jalandhar-born Pakistani writer, has been publishing fiction since the 1960s, but his work is little known in India. In Regret, the first of these two novellas, the author recreates the childhood idyll of two friends, which was shattered by Partition. In Out of Sight, Ismail, who narrowly escaped the carnage of 1947 in his youth, despairs at the sudden resurgence of sectarian violence in Pakistan, and resolves to protect his loved ones.