When Sleep Journeys first appeared in 1981, it took the Urdu poetry world by storm. Now considered one of the finest contemporary Urdu poets, Azra Abbas was among the first to embrace experimental, free verse poetry. A single book-length poem, divided into three cantos, Sleep Journeys is a dreamlike rumination that explores faith, female desire, and the subconscious mind. Abbas’s language is simple and austere, the complexity of the work emerging through repetition, interweaving, and juxtaposition. The result is a gossamer thread that leads the reader through a labyrinth of metaphor, imagery, and awe.

Award-winning translator Daisy Rockwell expertly captures the rhythm and flow of the original. The result is a book that ushers us into a state between sleeping and waking, the world of hidden thoughts and desires. This edition brings one of the most celebrated Urdu poems of the latter twentieth century to a broader, worldwide readership.

Azra Abbas was born in 1950 in Kanpur, India, and immigrated to Karachi, Pakistan, as a child. She burst onto the contemporary Urdu poetry scene in 1981 with the publication of her book-length prose poem Sleep Journeys (Nind ki Musaafaten). Writing prose poetry was a daring choice at the time; Abbas took a fresh approach, heralding a new beginning in Urdu poetry. She has written seven collections of poetry, two memoirs, a collection of short stories, and a novel. She lives in Karachi, where she is composing a novel and writing poetry. 

Daisy Rockwell is an artist, writer, and Hindi-Urdu translator living in Vermont. She has translated numerous classic literary works from Hindi and Urdu into English, including Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand won the International Booker Prize and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. She is a past winner of MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Translation of a Literary Work for Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There. More recently, she was awarded the Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award, recognizing the career achievements of translators of Indian languages. Her memoir, Our Friend, Art, is forthcoming in 2027.

Translator’s Note

First Canto
Second Canto
Third Canto

A Bit About Me: Afterword to the 1981 Edition
Sleep Journeys and Me: Afterword to the 1988 Edition
nii.nd kii masaafate.n: In Roman Transliteration

Acknowledgments