Description
This is a published book of short stories written by my father, Iqbal Ahmad, which is no longer in print. Description from the back cover: THE OPIUM EATER consists of a delightfully accessible collection of short stories. Its strength lies in its gentleness. Ahmad writes with such obvious affection about the foibles and beliefs of his characters that the resulting creations take on an extra dimension in memory. The stories involve: a brilliant opium-eater and his parrot; the coffee-house regular with his existential discourse; a rural girl on a religious pilgrimage forced into prostitution; the obliterating power and healing within the eyes of the cobra; the cowardly visitor transformed into tiger-killer; the death of a professor's son during the unrest before the lifting of colonial rule; a grandmother's life rendered hollow by her early desertion by her husband; a husband whose infidelity results from his new bride's recurring dream; the story-book lovers transformed into perpetual spirits visible only to other lovers; the geometrical impossibilities of sexual intercourse between a hugely overweight banya and his young athletic bride; the unthinkable rebellious discourse between an authoritarian father and his grown son; the love (even in death) of a worker for his bicycle; and an immigrant's Westernized response to his mother's death in Pakistan. The stories have been previously published in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY, THE CANADIAN FORUM, THE FIDDLEHEAD, THE SOUTH ASIAN REVIEW, THE LITERARY REVIEW, THE ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA, and DESCANT.
Author's daughter's note
