Shamsur Rahman Faruqi shot to the notice of the English-speaking literary world in 2013 with his book called The Mirror of Beauty, a translation of his 2006 Urdu novel Kai Chand the Sar-e-Asman. Paucity of translators forced Faruqi to translate the novel himself. The book is a part-historical, part-fictional account of the life of Wazir Khanum, mother of the Urdu poet Daag Dehlvi. She had a highly unconventional career, and a fragmented life in which she had four lovers or husban