Word: epicent
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Musharraf Farooqi, the 39-year-old translator, is an unlikely savior. Growing up in Pakistan, he read of Amir Hamza's exploits in abridged Urdu versions adapted for children - virtually the sole form in which the epic survived into the 20th century. Farooqi, who admits to not being the most diligent student, would drift into daydreams inspired by the stories in class, imagining, he says, that he was a demon "running around with a tree trunk and clobbering humans with it." In university, he frequently shirked his prescribed engineering curriculum for a pile of dog-eared folk tales scrounged from...
...clearly the limit," says Muhammad Memon, professor of literature and Islamic studies at the University of Wisconsin. The richness of India's modes of cultural expression - particularly its blending of Sufi Islam and the mythological repertoire of the older strains of Hinduism - prompted opulent embellishments of the epic, deepening its playful world of myriad magical creatures and warlords riding rhinoceroses...
...Urdu Project, an online journal of translations and literary criticism. Then, on a wintry night in 1999, Farooqi says that a "horse-headed gent" and an "elephant-eared lady" - figures from the dastan - came to him in a dream and told him to embark on a translation of the epic...
...faithful rendition occasionally gets a bit confusing - mostly due to its whirlwind of countless characters and lightning-quick changes of scene. But it does succeed in offering, in Farooqi's words, "a bridge between [Adventures] and the modern world." Non-Urdu-speaking readers can at last appreciate an epic "on par with anything in the Western canon." And, with luck, the classical pantheon populated by indomitable Achilles, cunning Odysseus and righteous King Arthur will now be joined by a new beloved hero: mercurial, mighty Amir Hamza, astride his winged-demon steed, soaring to the heavens...
Though Brazil expects 5% economic growth this year, many are asking whether it's because of Lula or despite his failure to tackle an array of problems. Aside from Brazil's reputation for epic corruption, gaping inequality and baroque bureaucracy--it takes 152 days to start a business there, according to a KPMG consulting study, compared with 32 in Argentina--there are more pressing issues of an overvalued real, high taxation, weak infrastructure and especially pension reform. Incredibly, Brazilian pensioners receive more money as a share of GDP than the rest of the population of 188 million, sucking investment from...