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Journeys: a poet’s diary

its first conference in Lucknow (1936). Coppola’s nuanced account of AIPWA’s political and literary development includes its nationalist commitment and its pro-Soviet, pro-Allied World War II role. The years 1937– 47 are considered the AIPWA’s “Years of Power” (169) as it gathered strength in that period. The Urdu section (UPWA) was particularly prominent and its publications included important journals such as Naya Adab (New literature) However, Coppola attributes “the first major breach within the UPWA” (184) to this era: an essay by Ahmed Ali, dividing Progressives into “a political section” and “creative section” (184), placed Anand and Zaheer in the former group, and Ali himself, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and others in the latter. Ali objected to the AIPWA’s Marxist alignment since 1936, which had led to an emphasis on proletarian literature. Ali soon broke away; in time, Raipuri and others did too. Coppola’s writes of India’s division into the independent countries of India and Pakistan in 1947, and the impact of Cold War politics on both. The Indian Progressive Writers Association was allied with the Communist Party of India (CPI), which opposed the Nehru government; its highly politicized literary activities led to dissent, and then marginalization after the 1970 Afro Asian Writers Conference in Delhi. The Pakistani Progressive Writers Association’s links to the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP) was considered a security risk, due to Pakistan’s anti-Soviet alliance with the United States. In 1951 Faiz and Zaheer were accused and jailed (but later exonerated) in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case, a suspected left-wing military coup. Finally, in 1958, the martial law authorities seized the influential newspaper group Progressive Papers. However, Progressives in India and Pakistan maintained friendships and literary links, despite Indo Pakistan hostilities. Coppola’s last five chapters – each devoted to a different poet: Faiz, Asrarul Haq Majaz, Makhdum Mohiuddin, Ali Sardar Jafri and Sahir Ludhianvi – provide a lyrical celebration of timeless poetry by exceptional writers inspired by the Progressive Writers Movement, which gave Urdu a new voice. This is a truly informative, profound and thought-provoking book on a remarkable body of work and its writers.