Zulfikar Ghose

Zulfikar Ghose (born March 13, 1935, Sialkot, India [now Pakistan]—died June 30, 2022, Austin, Texas, U.S.) is a Pakistani American author of novels, poetry, and criticism about cultural alienation.

Ghose grew up a Muslim in Sialkot and in largely Hindu Bombay (Mumbai) and then moved with his family to England. He graduated from Keele (England) University in 1959 and married Helena de la Fontaine, an artist from Brazil (a country he later used as the setting for six of his novels). In 1969 he moved to the United States to teach at the University of Texas, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 2007. Ghose became a U.S. citizen in 2004.

Ghose’s first novel, The Contradictions (1966), explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life. In The Murder of Aziz Khan (1967) a small farmer tries to save his traditional land from greedy developers. The trilogy The Incredible Brazilian—comprising The Native (1972), The Beautiful Empire (1975), and A Different World (1978)—presents the picaresque adventures, often violent or sexually perverse, of a man who goes through several reincarnations. Ghose’s other novels include Crump’s Terms (1975), Hulme’s Investigations into the Bogart Script (1981), A New History of Torments (1982), Don Bueno (1983), Figures of Enchantment (1986), The Triple Mirror of the Self (1992), and Shakespeare’s Mortal Knowledge: A Reading of the Tragedies (1993).

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A Study of Poetry

Ghose’s poems—including those in The Loss of India (1964), Selected Poems (1991), and 50 Poems (2010)—are often about the travels and memories of a self-aware alien. Beckett’s Company (2009) is a collection of personal and literary essays. He also wrote the autobiography Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965).