Enter the world of Jassosi Dunya - ' an intricately demented world of larger than life villains, mad genius detectives, and beautiful femme fatales,'
These lines are from the blurb of the English translation of Ibn-e-Safi's book from his Jassosi Dunya novel. Who is Ibn-e-Safi? To many in the subcontinent he is the creator of memorable characters like Imran and Faridi who featured in books full of suspense, mystery, adventure and romance.
I have, unfortunately, not read a single one of his 116 novels in the Imran series or the 125 novels in the Jassosi Dunya series. I got hooked onto the great dastaan (story) of Tilsm Hoshruba at the tender age of eleven and thus, ignored Ibn-e-Safi. In my teenage years I read Asfaque Ahmed's Inspector Jamshed's series which was very entertaining, and unlike Ibn-e-Safi's books, easily available at bookstores.
So after all these years, what made me think of Imran series again? Hubby dear and myself happened to stumble upon an English translation of one of his books. We did buy the book but why read a translation when we know the original language and thus began my quest to read all the books in the Imran series. And what better time to start than July, the month of his birth and death anniversary.
I'm not sure how I'll go about this reading project but I have to read all of the Imran series books first and get hold of their artworks too. In case you are an owner of one of these books, and don't want them, please feel free to donate. And if you're a fan, join in. Read the novels with me (will post details soon) and leave the link of your blog/review in the comments section. Let's revive the work of this legendary Urdu writer.
Images: Google
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