[1] Born in Ghazipur, India, in 1946, Afzal Ahmed Syed has lived since 1976 in Karachi, Pakistan, where he worked as an entomologist until his retirement in 2005.
[2] He is the author of the modern nazm collections چھينی ہوئ تاريخ (An Arrogated Past, 1984), دو زبانوں ميں سزاۓ موت (Death Sentence in Two Languages, 1990), and روکوکو اور دوسری دنيائيں (Rococo and Other Worlds, 2000).
Syed’s poetry was anthologized in An Evening of Caged Beasts: Seven Postmodernist Urdu Poets (New York: OUP, 1999).
Syed has translated a wide and important body of works by contemporary poets, playwrights and novelists.
His work has been widely published in leading Urdu literary periodicals such as Shabkhoon, Aaj, and Dunyazad.