| Mirza Athar Baig | |
| Birth Date: | 7 March 1950 |
| Birth Place: | Lahore, Pakistan |
| Occupation: | Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, philosopher |
| Spouse: | Nabila Athar (1953–2011) |
| Notableworks: | Ghulam Bagh, Sifar se aik tak, Hasan Ki Surat-e-Hal |
| Alma Mater: | Government College University, Lahore |
| Children: | Sarim Baig, Basim Baig |
| Awards: | Pride of Performance |
Mirza Athar Baig (Urdu: مرزا اطہر بیگ, born 7 March 1950) is a Pakistani novelist, playwright and short story writer. He was born in Sharaqpur, Punjab. Both his parents were school teachers and encouraged him to read widely from a young age.[1] He is associated with the Department of Philosophy, at Government College University in Lahore. His fiction works include three novels, a short story collection, and numerous plays for television.
His first novel, Ghulam Bagh (Slave Garden), is considered one of the central works of literature in the Urdu language.[2] [3] [4] The novel is very popular in Pakistan and has also received critical acclaim. Five editions have been published since its initial publication in 2006.[5]
In addition to Ghulam Bagh, a collection of Baig's short stories, titled Beh Afsana (Anti-Story) was published in 2008. His second novel, Sifar se aik tak (From Zero to One), was published in 2010. In July 2010, DAWN newspaper published a review of Sifar se aik tak [6] commenting on its popularity with the youth, which Baig's literature is reputed to enjoy in general.[7] [8]
His third novel, Hassan Ki Surat-e-Hal, was published in 2014 and has received critical acclaim in Pakistan[9] [10] [11] as well as in international media.[12] [13] [14] It was translated into English,[15] and the translation received favourable reviews.[16] [17] In Hasan Ki Surat-e-Hal, Baig experiments with different narrative structures. He uses surrealist and poststructuralist theories and techniques to expand the formal limits of the Urdu novel. He has been credited with introducing postmodernism to Urdu literature by literary critics, but his own assessment of this topic is rather different: "Generally, I don’t say much when labelled as ‘post-modern’ because I consider it as a naïve and simplistic categorization. The ' modernity' we have in our parts of the world is a vastly different socio-historical process than western modernity, out of which the so-called post-modernity evolved. What sort of ‘post-modernity’ would bloom out of our ‘modernity’? Something is laughable about it but a lot is poignantly serious."[18] The book's formal experimentations arise from Baig's belief in states of wonder as central to philosophy as well as literature.[19]