Celebrated writer of international fame and a trendsetter in Urdu fiction Qurratulain Haider breathed her last in the early hours of Tuesday after about a month of hospitalisation. The world of literature was enveloped in a pal of gloom with the news of the writer’s death and described her loss as the end of an era.
Haider, who was around 80, had been undergoing treatment at the Kailash Hospital in the neighbouring Noida. She was diagnosed with a chronic lung ailment but the immediate cause of her death was said to be a pneumonia attack.
She was buried at the Jamia burial ground here this evening. Popularly known as Annie Apa, the writer lived the last days of her life with her niece Huma Haider. Bharatiya Jnanpith, the country’s most prestigious literary body which had honoured her with its Award for 1989, held a condolence meeting here at which it said the death of Haider was an irreparable loss to the Indian narrative literature. President Pratibha Patil condoled the death of  Haider.
A towering figure of Indian literature, Haider was born in 1927 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. She established novel writing as a serious genre in the poetry-oriented world of Urdu literature. Urdu novel acquired new sensibility at the hands of Ms Haider, as she shook it out of its stagnation and obsession with fantasy and frivolous realism.
A prolific writer, Haider has penned some 12 novels and novellas, four collections of short stories and has translated important works from other languages, including her timeless classic Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire)’ in English.