Faiz Ahmad Faiz (13 February 1911 – 20 November 1984) was a Pakistani poet, and author in Urdu and Punjabi language. He was one of the most celebrated writers of the Urdu language in Pakistan. Outside literature, he has been described as “a man of wide experience” having been a teacher, an army officer, a journalist, a trade unionist and a broadcaster.
Faiz was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and won the Lenin Peace Prize.
Born in Punjab, British India, Faiz went on to study at Government College and Oriental College. He went on to serve in the British Indian Army. After Pakistan’s independence, Faiz became the editor to The Pakistan Times and a leading member of the Communist Party before being arrested in 1951 as an alleged part of conspiracy to overthrow the Liaquat administration and replace it with a left-wing government.
Faiz was released after four years in prison and went on to become a notable member of the Progressive Writers’ Movement and eventually an aide to the Bhutto administration, before being self-exiled to Beirut.Faiz was an avowed Marxist, and he received the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962. His work remains influential in Pakistan literature and arts. Faiz’s literary work was posthumously publicly honored when the Pakistan Government conferred upon him the nation’s highest civil award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, in 1990.
