Our Correspondent/ Lucknow
Renowned Urdu scholar and short story writer Naiyer Masud passed away in Lucknow Monday (July 24, 2017). He was 81. He breathed his last at his ancestral home in old Lucknow city.
Masud is the author of many scholarly books and translations, particulry of Kafka, but is best known for his short stories, collected in the volumes Ganjifa, Simiya, Itr-e-kaafoor, and Taoos Chaman Ki Myna. He was awarded the 2001 Urdu prize of the Sahitya Akademi and the Saraswati Samman in 2007.
Recently, the Oxford University Press translated all of his works into English and published the ‘Collected works of Naiyer Masud’, years after he received the Sahitya Akademi Award for Urdu in 2001 and the Saraswati Samman in 2007.
He received the honor of being the subject of the entire 1997 issue of the Annual of Urdu Studies.
His stories have been translated into English by M.U. Memon in the volumes The Snake Catcher and Essence of Camphor.
Masud was born in Lucknow and has spent nearly all his life there, working until his retirement as a Professor of Persian at Lucknow University. He did his graduation from Lucknow University and later got a degree in MA (Persian) from the same University apart from Phd in both Persian and Urdu from Allahabad University and Lucknow University respectively.
Masud was the son of Syed Masud Hasan Rizvi ‘Adeeb’, also a Lucknow University Professor of Persian, a famed scholar of dastaan who was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ for ‘Literature and Education’ in 1970.
He was the elder brother of the noted satirist Azhar Masud.
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