Jamil Ahmad

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Jamil Ahmad ( Panjabi جمیل احمد , born June 1, 1931 in Jalandhar , India ; died July 12, 2014 in Islamabad , Pakistan ) was a Pakistani writer.

Biographical

Jamil Ahmad was born in Punjab Province , which was part of British India at the time . As a young man, he chose a career in administration. After studying in Lahore , he decided in 1954 to go to remote tribal areas as a civil servant. In this way he learned Pashto and was able to deal with the culture of the individual tribes.

In 1956, Ahmad met his German wife in London, whom he married soon after. The Ahmad family lived for years in remote regions of Pakistan, along the border with Iran and Afghanistan, which are now considered refuges for extremists. Ahmad rose quickly in the hierarchy of officials and became the political representative of the government in the Swat Valley in the early 1970s . There he met an American writer who inspired him to write. However, he soon stopped his lyrical attempts. On the advice of his wife, he began to compose his many notes and impressions of the tribal areas in prose. At that time, however, a publisher could not be found for his manuscript.

It wasn't until 30 years later, when his brother heard of a literary competition and submitted the yellowed manuscript, that it was finally published. The book was first published in English in South Asia, then in England and the USA. There are now editions in German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Italian and several other languages.

The Wandering Falcon was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Commonwealth Prize . Jamil Ahmad lived with his wife in Islamabad until his death .

Reception and work

In his novel The Way of the Falcon , Jamil Ahmad leads the reader through an archaic world in the footsteps of the boy Tor Baz . He tells of the border region between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, of enchanting landscapes, of tribal rites and the struggle for survival. In his prose, Ahmad wants to let the closed world of the tribes live on, which in reality have long since dissolved. The author does not hide the violence and cruelty that shape this everyday life. Jamil Ahmad's stories are characterized by the clarity of his sentences, which, with rhythmic precision and sparse words, evoke the relentless loneliness of the desert world between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. “The way of the falcon draws its effect from the tension of restrained and gripping storytelling. His intellectual adventure arises from the clash of archaic and modern values. "

Works

  • The way of the hawk . Translated from the English by Giovanni and Ditte Bandini. Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg, 2013, 188 pages, ISBN 978-3-455-40394-7

Individual evidence

  1. Süddeutsche Zeitung v. March 20, 2013
  2. Jamil Ahmad. In: hoffmann-und-campe.de. Retrieved September 25, 2018 .
  3. Süddeutsche Zeitung v. March 20, 2013
  4. Der Tagesspiegel v. March 3, 2013

Web links