"It was a wonderful experience interacting with you and appreciate the way you have planned and executed the whole publication process within the agreed timelines.”
Subrat SaurabhAuthor of Kuch Woh Pal
Memoir of an Indian academic, recounting his life from graduate school till his retirement, in locations in the Middle East and Europe, while maintaining his Indian roots. People interested in anthropology, life of an Indian immigrant in Europe, the politics of oil and the Middle East.
It has been more or less a year since ‘Transience of Life’ volume 1 was published. It is cause for much reassurance that serious-minded Urdu readers, some venerable magazines, and a few dedicated friends and associates have praised the memoir in appropriate words and raised my confidence. Otherwise, in the last half a century, all my books and articles on topics in anthropology that were published are in English, the language that became the tool of my teaching and academic employment. Reading and writing in Urdu had been left behind in Lucknow half a century ago.
Ghaus Ansari and Translated from Urdu by Arif Ansari
Ghaus Mohiuddin Ansari was born in Lucknow, India. He was educated at Lucknow University and University of London, and later earned his Ph.D. in anthropology at University of Vienna in 1957. He served in research and teaching positions at universities in Baghdad, Libya, Kuwait, and Vienna, where he was appointed professor emeritus. He was the founding chairman of the IAUES Commission on urban anthropology. After retirement he lived in Calpe, Spain and Vienna, where he died in 2012.
Arif Ansari was born in Lucknow and grew up in Aligarh, where he attended Our Lady of Fatima Secondary School. He was educated in electrical engineering at AMU, Aligarh, India and SIU, Carbondale, IL. A wireless communication engineer by training and profession, he divides his time between Maryland and New York.
