Set against the backdrop of life in the collieries, the novel Fire Area, is a delineation of the heartrending conditions of the labourers and their shylockian exploitation at the hands of the powers that be. It is a murky world inhabited by people of varying lives and character, engaged in the monumental struggle for survival. Here, both realism and idealism coincide and clash. And a moment of hope is but a forbidden fruit. A profound and mature vision of all that is dark in the drama of human existence. Fire Area, is one of the finest novels to emerge from modern Urdu literature.
Ilyas Ahmad Gaddi (1932-1997) is one of the pioneers of new writing in Urdu, and particularly short stories which he took to great heights. His stories influenced by his personal experiences, strikes us with a living immediacy of its language. His works include Zakhma (1950), Marham (1951), Aadmi (1983), Thaka Hua Din (1987). Fire Area (1994) won him the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Jai Ratan is one of the finest and the most prolific of translators from Urdu to English. A Sahitya Akademi awarded translator, Jai Ratan, during his long career has translated many Urdu and Hindi works into English.
The novel Fire Area is a profound and mature vision of all that is dark in the drama of human existance. It is a murky and dingy world inhabited by a horde of people engaged in the profession of survival, against the backdrop of heart stopping, bewildering atmosphere of gloom in the collier- ies. A people who continuously struggle to find a place to live on day to day basis to escape the lingering shadows of despair.
Ilyas Ahmad Gaddi's delineation of the heart rending conditions of the labourers, their exploitation and their woes, are superbly depicted. An exploitation that is ruthless and stumbles upon a pound of flesh for a piece of bread. The invisible but invincible human greed, the bound- less wealth being accumulated by the gory monsters by deducing even the clotted blood of the dead.
What strikes the imagination of the readers, in the first place, is Gaddi's understanding of the life of collieries, and its deeprooted vices, the disasters and catastrophy. Gaddi's sympathy explicitly stays with the suffering multitude of the crawling insects with their truncated wages which ensure neither life nor death.
Fire Area is quite a revelation of Gaddi's fictional prowess, his narrative skill, his craftsmanship and the art to create and weave a story with complex patterns of meanings. It is a revelation of a fallen world.
Gaddi builds his world and trains his gun through a cobweb of people of different hues, colour and characters.
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