Phoenix Fled

Hosain’s books stir with life and the play of sunlight and rain. To read them is as if one had parted a curtain or opened a door, and strayed into the past … Hosain’s greatest strength lies in her ability to draw a rich, full portrait of her society - ignoring none of its many faults and cruelties – Anita DesaiThere is so much to love and admire in these stories - their understanding of heartbreak, their attention to affection and love across many divides, their intelligence about power structures, their vividly drawn characters, their sly humour. Long after I finished reading, I found myself still recalling the tiny moments, so beautifully rendered, that made them come to life – Kamila ShamsieTo each episode Attia Hosain brings a superb imaginative understanding and sense of poignancy of the smallest of human dramas * Sangat Review *

Attia Hosain (1913-1998) was born in Lucknow and educated at La Martiniere and Isabella Thoburn College. She blended an English liberal education with that of a traditional Muslim household where she was taught Persian, Urdu and Arabic. She was the first woman to graduate from among the feudal ‘Taluqdari’ families into which she was born.

Influenced in the 1930s by the nationalist movement and the Progressive Writers’ Group in India, she became a journalist, broadcaster and writer. In 1947, she moved to England and presented her own women’s programme on the BBC Eastern Service for many years, and appeared on television and the West End stage. She is the author of Phoenix Fled (1953) and Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961).

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