Kirjahaku

Mumbai was almost submerged on the fatal noon of 26 July 2005, when the merciless downpour and cloudburst had spread utter darkness and horror in the heart of the city. River Mithi was inundated, and the sea was furious. At this hour of torturous gloom, Rohzin begins declaring in the first line that it was the last day in the life of two lovers, Asrar and Hina. The novel's protagonist, Asrar, comes to Mumbai, and through his eyes the author describes the hitherto-unknown aspects of Mumbai, unseen colours and unseen secrets of the city's underbelly. The love story of Asar and Hina begins abruptly and ends tragically. It is love at first sight which takes place in the premises of Haji Ali Dargah. The arc of the novel studies various aspects of human emotions, especially love, longing and sexuality as sublime expressions. The emotions are examined, so is love as well as the absence of it, through a gamut of characters and their interrelated lives: Asrar's relationship with his teacher, Ms Jamila, a prostitute named Shanti and, later, with Hina; Hina's classmate Vidhi's relations with her lover and others; Hina's father Yusuf's love for Aymal; Vanu's indulgence in prostitutes. Rohzin dwells on the plane of an imagination that takes readers on a unique journey across the city of Mumbai, a highly intriguing character in its own right.

Rahman Abbas (born 30 January 1972) is an Indian fiction writer and the recipient of the India's highest literary Award Sahitya Akademi Award for his fourth novel Rohzin in 2018.He is also the recipient of the two State Academy Awards for his third and fourth novels respectively i.e. Hide and Seek in the Shadow of God (2011) and the Rohzin in 2017.He is the only Indian novelist whose work in German has received a LitProm Grant funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Swiss-South Cultural Fund. He writes in Urdu and in English. His novels deal with themes of forbidden politics and love.The largest online reading portal Rekhta has stated that Rahman Abbas is one of the most read Urdu novelists.Penguin Random House has published Rohzin in English in May 2022.Rohzin has been longlisted for JCB Prize 2022, the richest literary prize in India.

Zindeeq or Heretic, is the first Urdu novel to receive the support of an International Research Grant funded by the 'Crossing Borders' program of the 'Robert Bosch Foundation' and the 'Literarisches Colloquium, Berlin' towards its creative process. The Times of India states that 'Rahman Abbas bagged this grant to tour Europe, especially concentration camps in Germany, to study the impact of Nazism on German society.' Rahman Abbas visited Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, and France in 2019-2020 to research and understand how the racist and nationalist ideology of Nazism resulted in a genocide as yet unparalleled in human history.A dystopian and apocalyptic novel, Zindeeq is a comparative study of the effects of Nazism in Europe and the damages that religious extremism may cause in Pakistan and India. The novel devises a new narrative style, Mythological Realism, to tell the stories of men and women living in an extremely volatile time and how this traumatic period affects their lives, dreams, sexuality and pleasures. Their impulses, follies, self-dialogues, tendencies, delusions, and insecurities are the maps through which the novel unfolds, from 2045 to 2075, in the aftermath of major societal upheaval.