Biographical Sketch
Born in 1935 in Sialkot, Pakistan, Zulfikar Ghose moved with his family to Bombay during
the war in 1942. By 1965 he had only returned to Sialkot twice, once to attend a marriage
and once to mourn a death. Thus, his writing reflects nostalgia for his roots (
Mystique of Roots), as well as confusion about where they are, India
or Pakistan ( Loss of India).
In 1952, he made his way to London, where he lived with his father in moderate lack of
money. He obtained his degree from Keele University, and spent some years as a cricket
correspondent for the
Observer while working on his writing. Anthony
Smith, B.S. Johnson, and Ghose met when all three served as joint editors, along with John
Fuller, of an annual anthology of student poets called Universities' Poetry. He also made the acquaintance of Ted Hughes,
Sylvia Plath, and the American novelist Janet Burroway, with whom he occasionally
collaborated.
From 1963-69, Ghose taught and wrote in London. Two collections of his poetry were
published,
The Loss of India (1964) and Jets From Orange (1967), along with an autobiography called Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and his first two novels,
The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). He met, courted, and in 1964 married
the Brazilian artist Helena de la Fontaine. During this time he kept up his correspondence
with Anthony Smith despite the differing courses of their lives, and would continue to do so
in the years to come.
In 1969, Zulfikar Ghose uprooted and replanted himself once again in Austin, Texas, where
he took up a position at the University of Texas as a professor of English. He continued
writing and has published a number of novels including the
Incredible Brazilian trilogy (1972-1985), as well as the collections
of poetry The Violent West (1972) and A Memory of Asia (1984).
Ghose died in Austin on June 30, 2022.
Scope and Contents
The Zulfikar Ghose Collection is organized in two series, I. Poems and Short Story and II.
Correspondence to Anthony Smith. The first includes poetry from
The Loss of India, Jets from Orange, and other
poems and work from that era. The second consists of correspondence with Anthony Smith from
1959-1992.
The poetry holdings emphasize Ghose's work from the early 1960s. The collection of work
related to
The Loss of India is particularly strong, with
nearly every poem from that publication represented in typescript, including The Body's Independence and This Landscape, These People, two poems Ghose attributes to Anthony
Smith's influence. Certain poems associated with, but not published in The Loss of India are also included here. One segment of edited work
contains a note from Ted Hughes. Among the materials for Jets from Orange are a number of typescripts from that publication
that were written concurrently with works from The Loss of India. Of the poems in the final folder, one is
dedicated to B.S. Johnson ( The Between of Love), one
authored by Edward Lucie-Smith ( Lesson), and one
co-authored by Ghose and Janet Burroway ( Your Country and Mine). A
single short story by Ghose, The Third Wife, is also
present. All the works are indexed by title in this guide.
Most of the correspondence collected in the second series spans the years between 1959-63, during which Ghose and Smith were collaborating to edit
Universities' Poetry. This and other themes are reflected in their
correspondence, including their shared love of cricket, Ghose's relationship with imagism in
poetry, his poverty, and his courting of Helena de la Fontaine. Of note are letters from
across India during a subcontinental tour during the winter of 1961-62, and letters from
Austin, Texas, after Ghose took a position at the university. The nature of their
correspondence was described in a 1994 lecture Smith gave, a typescript of which is
available in the A.C.H. Smith Collection at the Ransom Center.