A Tilt In Time : Partition & Pakistan – a mid-century memoir – Qurratulain Hyder, Translated from the Urdu by Fatima Rizvi

Description

In A Tilt in Time, Qurratulain Hyder brings her singular vision to a restless, formative decade in Pakistan, shaped by Partition and its aftermath. Drawn from Parts 12–15 of her monumental Kar-e Jahan Daraz Hai, this volume recounts her experiences in Delhi, Lahore, Karachi, Dhaka, and London. Hyder has described this sweeping work as a “biographical non-fiction novel”, offering us a unique, intimate social history of Pakistan in the 1950s, before the advent of martial law, peppered with her characteristic wit and wry observations.

Writer, observer, traveller—Hyder stands at the centre of her own story, at once witness and participant, mapping a life shaped by migration, work, and the shifting cultural worlds of mid-century South Asia. As memory folds into narrative, the personal and political become inseparable, illuminating a world in transition.

What emerges is a profound meditation on belonging—on the impossibility, yet necessity, of return.