Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa

مرزا محمد ہادی رسوا

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa in the original Urdu with a facing English translation. The first two chapters of each work are free with ads; Members and Patrons can read the full work without ads. Works can also be read in Roman Urdu and Hindi script.Mirza Hadi Ruswa: Life and Works of the Author of Umrao Jan Ada

Life1857–1931

Ruswa was born in Lucknow and grew up in the city's cultivated society, the world his novel portrays. He studied Arabic and Persian in the traditional way and taught himself mathematics, chemistry, philosophy and English. He took the pen-name Ruswa, "disgraced" or "notorious", a typically ironic choice for a poet.

He taught for many years at Christian College in Lucknow. Late in life he moved to Hyderabad in the Deccan, where he worked on translating Western philosophy into Urdu, and he died there in 1931.

Works by Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa

Novel · 1899

First two chapters free

Umrao Jan Ada

امراؤ جان ادا

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa

Mirza Hadi Ruswa's novel of 1899, the most celebrated of all Urdu novels. Kidnapped as a child from her home in Faizabad and sold to a courtesan's house in Lucknow, Amiran grows up to become Umrao Jan, singer, dancer and poet, under the pen-name Ada. Late in life, at a gathering of poets, she is persuaded to tell her story to Ruswa: her training, her lovers and patrons, the bandit Faiz Ali, the upheaval of 1857, and her return to the town she was stolen from. A portrait of the vanished culture of nineteenth-century Lucknow, told in its own voice. Urdu text with a facing English translation; the first two chapters are free to read.

20 chaptersEnglishEspañolFrançaisالعربية中文Русский