Jagy Hain Khuwab Main Might Resurrect The Dead Urdu Prose Fiction

As a student of literature I believe that the Urdu prose fiction being produced in Pakistan is total waste of time; as it only revolves around one particular issue "a middle class girl of marriageable age finding prince of her dreams, marrying him and living happily ever after". 

Whether it is short story or novel, both have serious issues with plot and flaws in technique. The best example of that is the so-called novels of Umeerah Ahmed and Nimra Ahmed teaching us so-called moral values and trying to strengthen our faith.

The golden days of Udru prose fiction in which Manto, Chugtai, Chander and Pritam created master pieces have faded away and Urdu fiction has utterly lost its taste. Recently I have read some Urdu novels including "Sasa", "Char Darvesh Aur Aik Kuchwa", "Mirwah Ki Ratain" and "Jagy Hain Khuwab Main".

I found "Jagy Hain Khuwab Main"  by Akhtar Raza Saleemi an interesting novel, with a new approach of story-telling, and another interesting fact about that novel is that it was published in 2015 and in 2017, its third edition came out, which is evident that this novel was well received by the readers.

Akhtar Raza Saleemi is poet, critic and novelist of Urdu and Hindko languages, and he is from Haripur KPK.

The novel is published by Romail House of Publication in 2015 and it is spread over 240 pages, while it got some good reviews by critics like Mustansir Hussain Tarar, Asad Muhammad Khan and others.

Mr. Tarar commenting on this novel wrote: 

"Akhtar Raza Saleemi's novel Jagy Hain Khuwab Main is a wonderful piece of art of novel writing.... this is the dream of Urdu novel writing that we having since a long time. We should stand up and welcome it."

The main character of the novel is named Zaman, who from 12 years is spending few full-moon nights in solitude at a remote cave and during that he starts having dreams of past in which he learns about the history, while the novel moves on during the time of earthquake at Balakot.

The novelist has touched different subjects like physics, meta-physics, history, philosophy and science, such variety of subjects sometimes is sometimes confusing for me, and at many places they slowed down the pace of the actual story.

However, Mr. Saleemi has wonderfully knitted the basic plot with the sub-plots of the story that made the novel readable and thoroughly enjoyable. This novel has given me a new ray of hope that Urdu fiction would very soon through away the marriage issues of middle class girls and adopt other topics as well, like Mr. Saleemi has done.