Masterpieces of Urdu Ghazal: From the 17th to the 20th Century

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book
Review: Beautiful poetry, well translated and put into historical context.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent service to urdu
Review: If you have heard of Ghalib and Mir, and want to know more about urdu poets and ghazals, this is the book. A collection of ghazals and short biographies of the most prominent names in urdu including Wali, Dard, Mir, Ghalib, Faiz, Iqbal and Firaq. The book helped me in several ways: 1) Introduced me to the excellent poetry of some of the names I was not very familiar with, like Mir Dard. 2) Helped me to completely decipher the meaning of many verses I had often heard but didn't quite understand. 3) Helped me in improving my persian reading skills, a script that I recently learned.

As all the verses were presented in persian and roman scripts along with the english translation, I had the choice of the most appropriate tradeoff between 'ease of understanding' and 'accuracy' according to the difficulty level of each verse.

Lastly I must mention that the preface to the book and the introductory piece on the tradition of ghazal are very well written as well.