Intikhab-e-Kalam Akhtar Shirani

This is a short and accessible selection of the poems of Akhtar Shirani, known from the 1930s as the Romantic Poet of Urdu. His poems broke new ground in Urdu and brought in the simplicity and sincerity associated with ancient Arabic poetry, which depicts love and the desert milieu familiar to our poet through his life in Rajasthan. All his contemporaries have been unstinting in their praise of Akhtar Shirani's contribution which has infl uenced three generations of Urdu poets.