SOURCE: Rahman, Tariq. “Zulfikar Ghose and the Land of His Birth.” Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (summer 1989): 179-87.

In the following essay, Rahman examines the importance of Ghose's writing to Pakistani and Indian literature in English, paying special attention to Ghose's poetry and his novel The Murder of Aziz Khan.

In an interview in 1984, Zulfikar Ghose remarked: “I have not been back to India or Pakistan for twenty-three years. Neither country has given me the slightest recognition. But this has nothing to do with writing.”¹ Yet, Ghose's relationship with the subcontinent has had a profound influence on his work. In fact the most important themes of Ghose, the consciousness of being deracinated and alienated from both Western and Indian society, are directly connected with the fact that he migrated to Bombay from his native Sialkot (which is now in Pakistan) in 1942 and from there to England in 1952.

Ghose's...