The World in Words
Travel Writing and the Global Imagination in Muslim South Asia

A literary and historical analysis of Urdu travel writing during the nineteenth century.

Daniel Joseph Majchrowicz (Author)

9781009340755, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 June 2023

300 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

'The World in Words: Travel Writing and the Global Imagination in Muslim South Asia is both a remarkable work of research on adventure storytelling and an adventure in itself. Charting connected histories, fictive kinships, and pluralistic visions of sublime beauty, Daniel Majchrowicz draws new maps of the subcontinent and the world that are dynamic and expansive, yet intimate. This essential guide to the Urdu travelogue hinges on a truth captured by the great Urdu poet Mir: “sarsar? tum jah?ñ se guzre, varnah har j? jah?n-e d?gar th?” (You breezed through the world without noticing, but each place was a world of its own). The sheer delight of exploring these worlds with Majchrowicz will lead readers to the ends of the earth and back—with no jet-lag whatsoever.' Syed Akbar Hyder, Associate Professor of Asian Studies and Islamic Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Based on over a decade of original archival research, this book shows how Urdu travel writing gave voice to a global imagination that reflected the ambition and aspiration of Indians and Pakistanis as they negotiated their place in the changing world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this interdisciplinary study, author Daniel Majchrowicz traces the social and literary history of the Urdu travelogue from 1840 to 1990 in six chronological chapters. Each chapter asks how travel writers used the genre to give meaning to the shifting social and political realities of their colonial and postcolonial worlds. The book particularly highlights the role of women writers in the production of a global imagination in Urdu with an emphasis on travel writing on Asia and Africa.

Acknowledgements
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction
Part I: 1. Bhavani Goes to Badrinath
2. A Future Fit for a King
3. The Travel Lesson
Part II: 4. Worldly Pleasures
5. Seeking Sisterhood
6. Border Crossings
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Travel writing [WTL], Asian history [HBJF], Literature & literary studies [D]