Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (30 September 1935 – 25 December 2020) was an Indian Urdu language poet, author, critic, and theorist. He is known for ushering modernism to Urdu literature. He formulated fresh models of literary appreciation that combined Western principles of literary criticism and subsequently applied them to Urdu literature after adapting them to address literary aesthetics native to Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. Some of his notable works included Sher-e-Shor Angez (1996), Ka’i Chand The Sar-e Asman (2006), The Mirror of Beauty (2013), and The Sun that Rose from the Earth (2014). He was also the editor and publisher of the Urdu literary magazine Shabkhoon.

Faruqi received the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honor in 2009. He was also a recipient of the Saraswati Samman, an Indian literary award, for his work Sher-e-Shor Angez in 1996, and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1986 for Tanqidi Afkar.