Ghose, Zulfikar, 1935-....

Author born in Pakistan, who also lived in India and the United Kingdom, and who has taught at the University of Texas at Austin since 1969.

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).