Timsal Masud

Timsal Masud is a Assistant Instructional Professor of Urdu language and literature, translator, editor, and textbook author. He completed a PhD at Lucknow University in 2008, where he studied trends in Urdu translations of modern Persian short-stories. Since completing his PhD, he has continued to remain interested in translation. He published Urdu translations of The Little Prince and Patrick Süskind's The Story of Mr. Sommer. While teaching languages classes, he noticed the need for a concise, user-friendly Urdu dictionary. This inspired him to write the Essential Urdu Dictionary, which was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2015. He has also revised an Urdu textbook, and he is completing a co-edited reader of Urdu texts for the classroom.

His research interests include translation and poetry, particularly marsiya (elegy). He recently edited a collection of Urdu’s most renowned marsiya poet Mir Anis (1803-1875). This collection entitled, Mir Anis Ke Marsiye, has more than 36000 couplets and will appear in four volumes. He secured a publisher for this extensive publication in Pakistan. He has also started transliterating Urdu works to the Devanagri script to reach a wider audience in India. Currently, he is working on a series of books about Awadh's last king, Wajid Ali Shah. The first book of this series is Lucknow ka Shahi Stage (The Royal Stage of Lucknow) by Masud Hasan Rizvi Adeeb.

In addition to his own research and teaching, he also greatly enjoy reading primary Urdu texts with graduate students and advanced undergraduates. He is particularly interested in reform and didactic literature, devotional literature, legal cases, and personal writings such as, diaries and letters.

He publishes regularly in Urdu literary magazines and write a bi-weekly column for the Urdu newspaper AAG, where he relates current events to historical documents and to Hindi-Urdu literature. http://dailyaag.com/epapers/epaper/edition/5029/sunday-aag/page/4