Biographical Sketch
Born in 1935 in Sialkot, Pakistan, Zulfikar Ghose moved with his
family to Bombay during the war in 1942. By 1965 he had only returned to
Sialkot twice, once to attend a marriage and once to mourn a death. Thus, his
writing reflects nostalgia for his roots (
Mystique of Roots), as well as
confusion about where they are, India or Pakistan (
Loss of India).
In 1952, he made his way to London, where he lived with his father in
moderate lack of money. He obtained his degree from Keele University, and spent
some years as a cricket correspondent for the
Observer while working on his writing.
Anthony Smith, B.S. Johnson, and Ghose met when all three served as joint
editors, along with John Fuller, of an annual anthology of student poets called
Universities' Poetry. He also made the
acquaintance of Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and the American novelist Janet
Burroway, with whom he occasionally collaborated.
From 1963-69, Ghose taught and wrote in London. Two collections of his
poetry were published,
The Loss of India (1964) and
Jets From Orange (1967), along with an
autobiography called
Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and
his first two novels,
The Contradictions (1966) and
The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). He met,
courted, and in 1964 married the Brazilian artist Helena de la Fontaine. During
this time he kept up his correspondence with Anthony Smith despite the
differing courses of their lives, and would continue to do so in the years to
come.
In 1969, Zulfikar Ghose uprooted and replanted himself once again in
Austin, Texas, where he took up a position at the University of Texas as a
professor of English. He continued writing and has published a number of novels
including the
Incredible Brazilian trilogy (1972-1985),
as well as the collections of poetry
The Violent West (1972) and
A Memory of Asia (1984).
Scope and Contents
The Zulfikar Ghose Collection is organized in two series, I. Poems and
Short Story and II. Correspondence to Anthony Smith. The first includes poetry
from
The Loss of India,
Jets from Orange, and other poems and work
from that era. The second consists of correspondence with Anthony Smith from
1959-1992.
The poetry holdings emphasize Ghose's work from the early 1960s. The
collection of work related to
The Loss of India is particularly strong,
with nearly every poem from that publication represented in typescript,
including
The Body's Independence and
This Landscape, These People, two
poems Ghose attributes to Anthony Smith's influence. Certain poems associated
with, but not published in
The Loss of India are also included here.
One segment of edited work contains a note from Ted Hughes. Among the materials
for
Jets from Orange are a number of
typescripts from that publication that were written concurrently with works
from
The Loss of India. Of the poems in the
final folder, one is dedicated to B.S. Johnson (
The Between of Love), one authored by
Edward Lucie-Smith (
Lesson), and one co-authored by Ghose
and Janet Burroway (
Your Country and Mine). A single
short story by Ghose,
The Third Wife, is also present. All
the works are indexed by title in this guide.
Most of the correspondence collected in the second series spans the
years between
1959-63, during which Ghose and Smith
were collaborating to edit
Universities' Poetry. This and other
themes are reflected in their correspondence, including their shared love of
cricket, Ghose's relationship with imagism in poetry, his poverty, and his
courting of Helena de la Fontaine. Of note are letters from across India during
a subcontinental tour during the winter of 1961-62, and letters from Austin,
Texas, after Ghose took a position at the university. The nature of their
correspondence was described in a 1994 lecture Smith gave, a typescript of
which is available in the A.C.H. Smith Collection at the Ransom Center.