Oral History, Conventional Morality and Intizār Hussain’s Fictional Beauty

Abstract

The article examines Intizar Husain’s fiction in relation to the mythological, folkloric, and oral narrative traditions that shape his storytelling. Placing Husain alongside his predecessors Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann, and his contemporary Italo Calvino, the study explores how each writer engages with the past to construct meaning in the modern world. While Kafka, Mann, and Calvino reinterpret myth and tradition to illuminate the complexities of modern consciousness, Husain’s narratives remain confined within a nostalgic attachment to cultural and religious memory. His inability to transcend this fixation results in stories that lack the multilayered narrative depth characteristic of his Western counterparts. The comparative reading, particularly with Thomas Mann, further reveals that Husain’s fiction often advances a culturally and religiously biased worldview rather than a universal human vision...