Confessions of a Native-Alien

by Zulfikar Ghose

159 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1965

About the author

Zulfikar Ghose (born in Sialkot, India (now Pakistan) on March 13, 1935) is a novelist, poet and essayist. A native of Pakistan who has long lived in Texas, he writes in the surrealist mode of much Latin American fiction, blending fantasy and harsh realism.

He became a close friend of British experimental writer B. S. Johnson, with whom he collaborated on several projects, and of Anthony Smith. The three writers met when they served as joint editors of an annual anthology of student poets called Universities' Poetry. Ghose also met English poet Ted Hughes and his wife, the American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath, and American author Janet Burroway, with whom he occasionally collaborated.
While teaching and writing in London from 1963–1969, Ghose also free-lanced as a sports journalist, reporting on cricket for The Observer newspaper. Two collections of his poetry were published, The Loss of India (1964) and Jets From Orange (1967), along with an autobiography called Confessions of a Native-Alien (1965) and his first two novels, The Contradictions (1966) and The Murder of Aziz Khan (1969). The Contradictions explores differences between Western and Eastern attitudes and ways of life.

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had I looked at the date of publication (Ghose was only 30), I would have realised that it could not be an extensive autobiography, especially as he lived until he was 87. Nor, given his extensive output, and commitments to his university professorship, should I have expected much more even if he’d written the book in later life. A writer’s life is, presumably, spent sitting, writing. Nevertheless I find Ghose an intriguing writer. When I first read him, over 20 years ago, no one I spoke to had heard of him, let alone read his books, which remains the case today.