Ahmed Ali (writer)

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Ahmed Ali (Urdu: احمد علی; 1 July 1910 – 14 January 1994) was a Pakistani writer, poet, critic, translator, diplomat and scholar. He helped found the All-India Progressive Writers Movement and is a pioneer of the modern Urdu short story. His Urdu story collections include Angarey (Embers), 1932; Hamari Gali (Our Lane), 1940; Qaid Khana (The Prison), 1942; and Maut Se Pehle (Before Death), 1945. He also wrote Twilight in Delhi (1940), his first novel in English, and is described as the forefather of Pakistani English fiction.

Born in Delhi, British India, Ali came from a family of Islamic scholars. His father, Syed Shuja-ud Din, was a civil servant who loved Persian literature. He began learning Qur'anic recitation at age 5. He studied English literature at Aligarh Muslim University and Lucknow University, where he achieved the highest marks in English in the history of the university.

Ali taught at Indian universities from 1932 to 1946, including Allahabad University and Lucknow University, and he was professor and head of the English Department at Presidency College, Calcutta (1944–47). He served as the BBC's Representative and Director in India during World War II (1942–45) and was a British Council Visiting Professor to Nanjing University.

In 1948, after Partition, Ali could not return to India and moved to Karachi, Pakistan. He became Director of Foreign Publicity for the Pakistan government and joined the Pakistan Foreign Service in 1950, becoming Pakistan’s first envoy to the People’s Republic of China. He wrote Muslim China (1949) and helped establish Pakistan’s embassy in Morocco.

Ali began writing early: his first English poem appeared in 1926, and his first English short story in 1929. He helped start the Progressive Writers' Movement with Sajjad Zaheer after Angarey was banned in 1933. He spoke at the movement’s first conference in 1936, but later left the movement, feeling it focused too much on Marxism.

His notable translation work includes Al-Quran, A Contemporary Translation, published in 1988, praised for its modern style. He died in Karachi on 14 January 1994.