ZULFIKAR GHOSE
2013
Zulfikar A. Ghose is a novelist, poet and essayist. A native of Pakistan who has long lived in Texas, he writes in the surrealist mode of much Latin American fiction, blending fantasy and harsh realism. Ghose grew up a Muslim in Sialkot and in largely Hindu Bombay (Mumbai), then moved with his family to England. He graduated from Keele (England) University in 1959 and married Helena de la Fontaine, an artist from Brazil (a country he later used as the setting for six of his novels). His first novel, The Contradictions (1966), explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life. In The Murder of Aziz Khan (1967) a small farmer tries to save his traditional land from greedy developers.
Ghose's trilogy The Incredible Brazilian, comprising The Native (1972), The Beautiful Empire (1975), and A Different World (1978), presents the picaresque adventures, often violent or sexually perverse, of a man who goes through several reincarnations. Ghose's other novels include Crump's Terms (1975), A New History of Torments (1982), and The Triple Mirror of the Self (1992) among others. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Texas-Austin.