Reviving Urdu, one book at a time

You launched your childrenrsquos book TikTik The Master of Time under Kitab last year What took you a year to formally launch the publishing house I had the Pakistan rights for TikTik and launched it here in Pakistan in partnership with a friend under Kitab That actually was a testrun for Kitab before I formally launched titles under the publishing house for the first time this month Author and translator Musharraf Ali Farooqi has launched his new publishing house Kitab with five Urdu and three English titles Pic courtesyArif Mahmood This year which I spent trying and testing things was an eyeopener I travelled to schools in Lahore Islamabad and Karachi and did sessions with children We sold quite a few books there and I returned with a better idea of how many copies I must actually print However the most significant insight I had was into reading habits These visits gave us an idea of what Pakistanrsquos children were reading what they would like to read and what their parents and teachers wished they could experiment with Many schools across Pakistan have quite a bit of money and the means to buy good books However they feel children are missing out on goodquality Urdu books Kids are competent in English and have access to English books but know very little about Urdu literature a fact most parents and teachers greatly lament today Is that Kitabrsquos philosophy then to encourage Urdu literature in Pakistan Yes Irsquod love to promote it here because no goodquality Urdu literature or translations for children are available to kids yet No one publisher can fill in the gap between fiction modern fiction and classics Many small publishers have sprung up in the past few years published good titles and shut down over time I wanted to ensure it doesnrsquot happen to Kitab and working at it for a year really helped I found good authors and illustrators got booksrsquo rights and mainly acquired good formatting software for Urdu books which doesnrsquot comeu00a0easy usually Tell us something about the titles yoursquove launched Kitab with We have launched with five Urdu titles and three books in English We have published works of famous Pakistani authors such as Sufi Tabassum Ghulam Abbas and Mehdi Azer Yezdi I am trying to introduce children to categories such as new literature and modern fiction Kitab will also publish a good combination of prose and poetry very few readers for instance know that Ghulam Abbas wrote poetry I chanced upon his poetry collection after someone told me his family had come across his childrenrsquos stories written way back in the 1950s Sufi Tabassum for instance wrote very layered poems His book Tot Batot Ki Duniya talks about the common man and a changing society It is a mythical tale of a young boy and how strange things happen to him How is the childrenrsquos booksrsquo market in Pakistan Also they are exposed to brutal realities in many Western titles does Kitab plan to deal with difficult themes too say strife and violence Reality already engages children in very brutal ways so I hope the literature Kitab publishes immerses kids thatrsquos the only brief I have in mind I remember bring gripped by fantasy and cultural gems in my childhood something thatrsquos not available to children in Pakistan today Yes a lot of books talk about painful subjects but I want to focus on things we have lost out on culturallyu00a0The childrenrsquos booksrsquo market is smaller in Pakistan than the one in India TikTik for instance sold 3000 copies here We are still trying to establish a smoother distribution market and selling with direct contact What do you plan to publish under Kitab in 2014 I am definitely looking at more Urdu classics and translating good English books into Urdu I am also looking at commissioning translations of English fantasy books into Urdu I am particularly excited about that because it could give rise to a new vocabulary altogether translating very modern English fantasy books in such an old language It will be a very interesting experiment I am also looking at approaching Indian writers and not just those writing in English I am open to publishing any Indian language Hindi Marathi and so on Yes but we do not have the expertise to handle books in Malayalam yet laughs u00a0For details visit wwwkitabcompku00a0