Lifting the Veil

Enlightened, bold, iconoclastic, progressive and feminist... Chughtai's style makes reading a delight

Dawn

One of the foremost Urdu writers of the 20th century, Ismat Chughtai is known for her iconoclastic, feminist writings which explored the inner workings of women's lives

Huffington Post

Chughtai's prose is supple, energetic, argumentative, funny, caustic, and colloquial. But what really distinguishes her from her peers is a bluntness that is often brutal, and a sarcasm that is always biting. This is high-voltage writing, it can be as vituperative as it is incisive, as polemical as it is profound.

India Today

Her marvellous skill with language and storytelling has resulted in the creation of some of the most powerful women characters in world literature

The Hindu

Gloriously provocative... female sexuality within a patriarchal world is Chughtai's central concern

Kamila Shamsie, from the introduction

Ismat Chughtai's work had a seminal impact on me... [her] rebellious life I carry about with me like a talisman

Kishwar Desai, author of 'Origins of Love'

A writer who was constantly challenging accepted notions of morality and urging her readers to examine a woman's place in society

Indian Express