Naiyer Masud (1936 – 24 July 2017) was an Indian

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

scholar and

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

writer.

Early life and education

Masud was born in

Lucknow Lucknow () is the List of state and union territory capitals in India, capital and the largest city of the List of state and union territory capitals in India, Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is the administrative headquarters of the epon ...

and spent nearly all his life there, working until his retirement as a Professor of

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Lucknow University University of Lucknow (informally known as Lucknow University, and LU) is one of the oldest public state university based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. LU's main campus is located at Badshah Bagh, University Road area of the city with a second ...

. Masud was the son of

Masud Hassan Rizvi Adib Masud Hassan Rizavi (1893–1975) was an Indian author and a scholar of Urdu literature. Born in 1893 in Bahraich in the North-Western Provinces of British India, he did his early college studies at the Canning College, Lucknow after w ...

, also a Lucknow University Professor of Persian, a scholar of dastaan who was awarded the '

Padma Shri The Padma Shri (IAST: ''padma śrī'', lit. 'Lotus Honour'), also spelled Padma Shree, is the fourth-highest Indian honours system, civilian award of the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan. In ...

' for 'Literature and Education' in 1970. He is the elder brother of the satirist Azhar Masud.

Career and honors

Masud is the author of many scholarly books and translations (notably of

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of real ...

), but is best known for his short stories, collected in the volumes

Ganjifa Ganjifa, Ganjapa or Gânjaphâ, is a card game and type of playing cards that are most associated with Persia and India. After Ganjifa cards fell out of use in Iran before the twentieth century, India became the last country to produce them.At the ...

, Simiya, Itr-e-kaafoor, and Taoos Chaman Ki Myna. For the last, he was awarded the 2001 Urdu prize of the Sahitya Akademi and the

Saraswati Samman The Saraswati Samman is an annual award for outstanding prose or poetry literary works in any of the 23 languages of India listed in Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India. It is named after the Hindu goddess of knowledge, Saraswati. The Sar ...

in 2007. He received the honor of being the subject of the entire 1997 issue of the Annual of Urdu Studies. A large selection of his stories have been translated into English by M.U. Memon in the volumes '' The Snake Catcher'' and '' Essence of Camphor''.

Early life and education

Career and honors

References

Further reading