Shahnaz Aijazuddin is a writer of unique distinction. She began her career writing columns while she was in Abu Dhabi for the Gulf News and other dailies. After her return to Lahore, she contributed regularly to The Frontier Post, Dawn and other papers. These articles proved so popular that she was prevailed upon to collate them into book form. The result was a charming volume titled Lost from View, published in 1994.

The love of her life – outside her own family, that is – was the Tilism –e-Hoshruba, one of the most beloved Dastans which, in our culture, had (and should have) the same importance amongst Homer’s Iliad or The Odyssey held for classicists in the west. Shahnaz made friends with Tilism when she was about ten years old. It has remained her constant companion ever since.

It was quite natural therefore for her to share her friend with other friends. That is how she embarked on her own Odyssey – the translation of the Tilism-e-Hoshruba from the Urdu but highly Persianised text into English. She decided at the outset that a word for word translation of seven volumes would have put the reader to sleep. And so sensibly, she compressed her narrative into one single, handy volume, but even that runs into 900 or so pages.

It is a tribute to her mastery over Urdu and over English that she has retained the spirit of the original while at the same time imbuing it with her own inimitable style and wit. Shahnaz Aijazuddin has spent several years researching the Tilism-e-Hoshruba and is deeply interested in Urdu and Persian. She has been a columnist with a leading Pakistani newspaper and has written for several other publications in India and Pakistan. A collection of her articles, Lost from View, was published in 1994. Shahnaz Aijazuddin is married and has three children and two grandchildren. She lives in Lahore, Pakistan.

Shahnaz Aijazuddin was born in Peshawar, brought up in places as scattered as Landikotal, Makran and Chitral, educated in Karachi, lived as an expatriate in Abu Dhabi and is now unsettled in Lahore! Such a varied background has provided her with a unique insight into different cultures, enabling her to observe people and places with rare perception and accuracy.

Drawing upon her deep interest in Urdu and Persian, she has spent several years researching the Tilism-e-Hoshruba before compiling an English translation in one volume, condensed from seven volumes of the Urdu original. This was published by Penguin India in 2009. Anyone who has read her translation will realise what a deft touch she has brought to what could have become a heavy, pedantic treatise.

It is a tribute to her mastery over Urdu and over English that she has retained the spirit of the original while at the same time imbuing it with her own inimitable style and wit.
She has been a columnist with a leading Pakistani English newspaper and has written for several other publications in India and Pakistan. A collection of her articles, Lost from View, was published in 1994. Shahnaz Aijazuddin is married and has three children and two grandchildren.