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I hope you are joking. No serious reader of Urdu literature would include any of these 10 in the best writers' list, except maybe Mushtaq Ahmed Yousfi. But he'll have hell of a competition to get in there.
Mufti Taqi Usmani, Maulana Yousuf Ludhyanvi or Abu Al Hassan Abbasi (who is he?) are not even considered Urdu writers by any definition, unless you are going to include religious writing in your list too.
i've immense respect for shafeeq-ur-rehman. his books "himaqatain", "madd-o-jazr", "shagoofay", and "kirnain" happen to be my favorite books. that whole happy go lucky style of writing, character creation, situation creation etc. has remained with me.
insha is also someone who writes immensely and i've only read james thurber who comes close to such crisp commentary with so much natural ease.
yousufi is great but i'd rate shafeeq ur rehman over him any day.
hijazi is too black and white - us against the world kinda writer. maybe the world is out here to get us, but that doesn't really make for good reading.
read shahab, mumtaz mufti, bano qudsia, and ashfaq ahmed and it was good.
ibn-e-safi may not be considered as a literary writer but man his novels and characters are amazing. read all 102 or 103 or whatever the number of his imran series novels in a week, they were so good that i couldn't stop myself from reading them. non-stop sort of stuff. underrated now a days is he.
manto was a major taboo, when i read him, didn't find anything that could be termed as a taboo. he has written what he felt and all of it makes a lot of sense.
there are so many others too however i've such limited literary credentials so i can't even think of them all. personally, shafeeq ur rehman remains my favorite, and to this day i've two of his books write next to my pillow. i'll never get over "neeli jheel" or "mad-o-jazr". never.
No I have not. Religious books are not particularly my cup of tea.Have you read them?
Had some huge Ibn-e-Safi fans in my family but never got around to reading them. Anyone read the English translations of his novels? Would ideally like to read the originals but I doubt I can find them outside Pakistan.
Also on the topic of detective novels anyone here remember Ishtiaq Ahmad? Not really top ten (or even top thousand) material but he has to be the most prolific urdu writer ever. Used to come up with a new novel every month. Had some pretty nasty and extreme views though.
His family got sick of his obsession but he left his home and went straight to Ishtiaq's place and lived (and helped with research/writing) for couple of months before he returned home.