A study of Urdu poetry, criticism, and interpretive tradition, moving between literary history, poetics, translation, and the dense pleasures of how a poetic culture explains itself to itself.

Pritchett attends to the living critical frameworks: ghazal, meaning, metaphor, reception, and the systems of awareness that shape how poems are heard, argued over, loved, and misread. A strong academic-literary title for readers interested in South Asian literature, Urdu poetics, comparative literary criticism, translation, Islamic literary culture, and the ghazal as both form and intellectual machine.

It is scholarly, but not dry in the embalmed institutional sense; there is a real attentiveness here to poetry as social practice, not just decorative language with footnotes attached. Niche, serious, and quietly radiant in the corner.

University of California Press paperback, 1994. First printing, with number line 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. Includes bibliographical references and index. Good second-hand condition, with light shelfwear to boards, minor rubbing to edges and corners, and mild page toning. Binding sound and text clean.