Ghulam Abbas

Early life

Ghulam Abbas was born on the 17th of November 1909 in Amritsar, Punjab, British India into a Pashtun family of the Sadozai tribe tracting its roots to Afghanistan. His family shifted to Lahore when he was still a child. He got his Intermediate degree as late as 1944 from the Punjab University because he began to earn a living as a writer early on and couldn't complete his education.

Ghulam Abbas could speak Urdu, Punjabi, English and Persian.

Themes and writing style Ghulam Abbas has written stories, plays, and poems for children, but his primary focus is fiction. He holds a prominent position in modern Urdu fiction. His works draw plots from everyday life, with characters grounded in reality. His writing features simple language, lively narration, and technically polished storytelling. While his stories may appear simple at first, they often reveal deeper layers of meaning upon closer reading. For example, his story Overcoat appears straightforward on the surface but conveys multiple layers of social significance.

Ghulam Abbas's characters are not pre-planned, but he picks up a few ordinary people from some class and corner of their society and environment and then presents them with the whole truths of their lives and all the good and bad details of their surroundings. They make their characters into ideals, not consciously convincing them to put a stamp of good on their personality, but in the world, as is usually the case, that good is often in decline and evil is rampant. Ghulam Abbas presents these things in exactly the same way. There is no extremism or idealism here, but the reflection of human nature is found in his works. There are colors of life in his art. When one gets a sense of problems and life he brings is such a deep analysis, that they bring the truth reader in front of the reader in the same way as in reality. He does not care about their egos. Rather, he brings forth the secrets of life.

Awards and recognition He received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, the third-highest civilian award of Pakistan, in 1967. The Women's Quarter and Other Stories from Pakistan (published 1984)