Towards the Pebbled Shore (Essays)

These essays abound in rare, delightful contexts and insightful connections produced by a penetrating, finished mind deeply read in multiple disciplines. We owe a debt of gratitude to Nomanul Haq for contextualising in this collection the debates and traditions from the diverse worlds of philosophy, poetry, and classics. Equally, they are Haq’s tribute to the men and women who, like him, dedicated their lives to the world of letters. – Musharraf Ali Farooqi, author, novelist, and translator

Towards the Pebbled Shore by Dr. Nomanul Haq is a truly remarkable, incisive, and enlightening work, a collection of essays illuminated by his profound knowledge of many literatures, languages, cultures, and their interconnectedness. His riveting discussions capture with great skill how words and narratives have traversed continents and communities … and profoundly influenced classical and contemporary texts. The rich commingling he portrays challenges the narratives of East vs West and the concepts of borders and boundaries … The book includes discussions on Latin, Greek, English, German, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Sanskrit; it focuses on the craft of very many writers ranging from Ibn Sina and Firdausi, Shakespeare and Goethe, Mir and Ghalib to lqbal, Faiz and Manto, Ahmed Faraz, Iftikhar Arif, and Parveen Shakir … – Muneeza Shamsie, author of Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English