It has two distinctions – an old dreaded well believed to have contained a python for ages and an old poor potter living among his community members along the banks of Yamuna.
One day, while sitting on the well-ring, haggard and broken, Dedrego’s buttock was brushed by the python’s hiss which miraculously turned him into a man of ideas, and since then, whenever a novel idea followed by an excitement and a tickling on the back of his head dawned upon him, he felt himself fortunate. And the ideas paved way to wealth, honour and fame for him. But his success was double-edged. On one side his mysterious skills propelled him to higher ranks and success, while on the other they dealt him with the harshness of his life – curse, isolation and apathy. Where will they lead him?
Fused with elements of fantasy, irony and tragedy and interspersed with humour, The Potter’s Poison is a symbolic story that explores the meaning of success, happiness and revenge in our lives. Dr. Haider delves into the minds of different people – the idealist, the pragmatic and the misled.
ISBN: 978-93-81115-21-3 Frog Books; Price: Rs 145; US $10; Pages: 160
About the Author
Dr. Haider is Professor in the Department of English in Preston University, Ajman in the UAE. He started his professional career in 1983 as a lecturer in Soghra Degree College in his home-town, Nalanda, Bihar.
In 1988, he was awarded Doctorate of Philosophy in English fiction from Magadha University on his work, ‘George Orwell as a political satirist’. Orwell has been a great source of inspiration for him and he owes a lot to Orwell’s style of writing
In pursuance of a better opportunity for life and career, Dr. Haider came to the UAE in 1993 and worked in Sharjah College, now Troy University, as a senior lecturer, and then in Al Ghurair University and Abu Dhabi University respectively as an Assistant Professor. He joined Preston University in 2004 as a Professor and Head of the Department of English.
Dr. Haider has an avid passion for teaching English language and literature. It’s the teaching alone, he admits, that has hoisted him into a creative writer. His own life, like his writing, is marked by simplicity and strength. He is a great admirer of Rabindranath Tagore and ‘Gitanjali’ has been his travelling companion ever since his college days.
He agrees that ‘Tagore’s rhythmically balanced style combines at once the feminine grace of poetry with the virile power of prose’. He is a staunch exponent of Allama Iqbal’s philosophy of Ego. His first novel ‘In Ocean of Notions’ published in 2001 is, as a matter of fact, an autobiographical reminiscence of hardships faced by his parents in bringing up and educating their children. Dr. Haider writes regularly. His articles and short stories have found places in various literary journals.