Shahabnama / شہاب نامہ by Qudratullah Shahab

And the end made one desire that the absorbing story was still lengthier. Khwaja Sahib wrote in his literary column published in an Urdu weekly that though its thickness was threatening, once you started reading the book, it would be impossible to do anything else till you read it through. But he, too, was convinced of its absorbability. Mushfiq Khwaja was one of those who criticised Shahabnama for its exaggerations, inaccuracies and 'stretched truths'.

Shahabnama is one of the books which, just like historical novels, make one believe that a term like 'faction' - a blend of 'fact' and 'fiction' - does exist, though frowned upon by many a critic.īut Shahabnama's readability made Shahab one of Urdu's most successful memoirists. Keeping in view Shahab's reputation as a man of integrity and a Sufi, one can say that, in the words of Mark Twain, he mainly told the truth but there were things that he stretched. But many bits of fact described in it have been questioned as they sound more like fiction. Qudratullah Shahab's Shahabnama is most probably Urdu's best-selling autobiography. I cannot say for sure whether it mars the image of a writer when the bits of fact in his or her autobiography sound like fiction, but I am positive that when bits of fiction sound like facts, it shows the writer's enviable command over the craft of story-telling. “NOTHING I have said is factual except the bits that sound like fiction,” said Clive James in his Unreliable Memoirs.

Shahabnama / شہاب نامہ by Qudratullah Shahab