Ahmad Ali

Ahmed Ali (1 July 1910 in Delhi – 14 January 1994 in Karachi) (Urdu: احمد علی) was a famous Pakistani author, translator and diplomat. He wrote novels, short stories and poems. He wrote in both Urdu (Pakistan's national language) and in English.

He was born in Delhi, British India and later migrated to Pakistan after national independence in 1947. In 1932, he had helped write Angaray (Coals) a collection of short stories written by him and some other 'progressive' writers. Later, he wrote his most famous novel Twilight in Delhi (1940), and then Purple Gold Mountain (poems, 1960), Ocean of Night (novel, 1962), Rats and Diplomats (novel, 1984) and The Prison-House (short stories, 1985). He also translated some portions of the Quran from Arabic to English and also some Urdu poems by early poets, like Mirza Ghalib.

During the 1950s and 1960s Ali also worked as a diplomat at the Pakistani embasses in Moscow (Russia) and Morocco and in China.

Ahmad Ali did not write very much after the start of military rule in Pakistan by General Zia ul Haq, in 1977. After the late 1980s, he was an old and sick man and died in 1995