Carla Petievich, The University of Texas, Austin:
In her engaging and enjoyable Cosmopolitan Dreams, Jennifer Dubrow draws upon her reading of Ratan Nath Sarshar’s famous picaresque work, Fasana-e Azad (lit. “Tale of Azad”), to argue that this “first novel in Urdu” helped create a modern literary culture—an Urdu cosmopolis— from what had been the premodern culture of classical Urdu. . . . Students and scholars both will want to read this book in conjunction with Dubrow’s other published work, and we look forward to more from this gifted scholar.
S. Akbar Zaidi, Columbia University:
This delightful slim monograph—no more than 120 pages of text—by Jennifer Dubrow underlines the resurgence of Urdu studies in the academy, as it does of new and recent scholarship, much of it still in the works awaiting publication, of Muslims under British colonialism in India in the nineteenth century. . . . This is a very useful work for scholars working on Urdu or on Muslims in colonial India and teaches us much. It has an excellent and wide bibliography and provides new insight on the relationship between print media and readership. It will become part of the new and emerging scholarship on Indian Muslims in colonial India and will supplement what one hopes will become a rich field of knowledge.
S. Akbar Hyder, The University of Texas at Austin:
Dubrow judiciously leads us into the Urdu cosmopolis, a fascinating crisscrossing of times, languages, religions, and technologies. Readers will be struck by the brilliant theoretical insights aligned with careful empirical evidence mined from the treasures of periodicals, satires, and novels. This work will certainly inspire us to rethink South Asian language politics, gender, colonialism, and resistance in exciting new ways.
Francesca Orsini, SOAS University of London:
Cosmopolitan Dreams plunges us into the rich world of nineteenth-century Urdu journalism, of sketches and dialogues, witty prose, satirical poetry, and serialized novels that happily crossed all kinds of genre boundaries. In lively depictions and often biting characterizations, sharp pens tackled the new conditions, aspirations, and challenges of colonial modernity. Nothing was spared and every kind of sanctimonious or pompous behavior was ridiculed. Urdu readers from all over India responded enthusiastically. Treading knowledgeably but lightly through a vast archive, and alternating between close readings and broader vistas, Cosmopolitan Dreams is a delight to read and will hopefully send readers scouting for those magazines in old libraries and online repositories.
In Cosmopolitan Dreams, Dubrow not only breaks new ground by presenting a thoroughly researched background, but develops and applies a highly plausible new framework for looking at the interlocked development of the vernacular newspaper and the novel in the colonial era. . . . Her insights are innovative and invaluable, particularly since such phenomena of popular culture have largely been ignored by scholars of Urdu literature.
Ayesha Abrar:
The book bears testimony to Dubrow’s genuine interest in archival material, her novel methodology, and commitment to painstakingly thorough research. . . . Accompanied by her accessible and eloquent writing style, Cosmopolitan Dreams stands out among its peers as an engaging and insightful read. These factors make Dubrow’s book eligible for recommendation to not just enthusiasts of colonial literary history and Urdu literary history but it will also interest the lay reader who can enjoy the witty factual anecdotes and translated pieces from nineteenth century periodicals.
Megan Eaton Robb, University of Pennsylvania:
Dubrow’s book is an elegant and apt contribution to the history of Urdu literature, capturing an essential set of modern voices in a late 19th century Urdu public characterized by diversity and polyphony. Demonstrating an agile command of a wide-ranging primary source archive, Cosmopolitan Dreams is a crucial contribution to the complicated history of Urdu literary publics and to multiple modernities; it is also a delight to read. While the place of religion and ethnicity in this modern Urdu public is debatable, Dubrow offers a compelling argument for the modern character of the late 19th century Urdu public as it does for the underestimated force of periodicals in the history of Urdu literature.
