Kuwait based renowned short-story writer in Urdu Dr. Waseem Siddiqi and author and a freelance journalist Dr. Navniit Gandhi together launched their Book ‘The Liar, and Other Stories’, a collection of 17 short stories in an elegant function organized by Writers Forum Kuwait. The short stories originally written in Urdu by Dr. Waseem Siddiqi was translated in English by Dr. Navniit Gandhi.
The Book ‘The Liar, and Other Stories’ has been published by Diamond Pocket Books, New Delhi. While the Book is already out in India, it was formally launched in Kuwait last week at the platform to which both the writers belong—The Writers’ Forum, Kuwait. The book was jointly released by noted Urdu short-story writer and the President of the Writers’ Forum, Kuwait- Dr. Mirza Umair Beg and well-known Hindustani poet- Umesh Sharma who is also the Vice-President and one of the Founders of Writers’ Forum.
It was collaboration between Urdu and English; between a Master in Environmental Science and a Master in International Relations; between a writer of short stories and an author in prose and poetry.
What made the collaboration possible was that both the writers live in Kuwait and both belong to the Writers’ Forum, Kuwait. It is a Forum established in 1995, and one of its underlying objectives is to encourage the building of bridges between literary works written in different languages.
Not only do its members write and recite in diverse Indian languages, but they listen to, understand and appreciate each other’s works. Their understanding and appreciation of each other’s works has taken a giant leap with this endeavor between two writers, one in Urdu and the other in English.
The stories in ‘The Liar, and Other Stories’ are short, crisp and simply melt the heart… While most of the stories are centered on children, they are an interesting-read for all age-groups.
The underlying feature of all the stories is that they are simple and sensitively written. The stories overwhelmingly appeal to our sense of empathy. The characters seem to be drawn from our everyday lives and the world around us.
The Book is available at www.dpb.in and “It is better to have read a great work of another culture in translation than never to have read it at all.”