Dr. Nazia Akhtar was invited to speak about her second book, The Deccan Sun, at the Hyderabad Literary Festival held on 25 January at Sattva Knowledge City, Hyderabad. The book contains her English translations of the Urdu essays and stories of Zeenath Sajida (1924-2008), a prominent Urdu writer and professor at Osmania University. Sajida’s work represents a striking and important perspective on Hyderabad at the cusp of great change – from the 1940s to the 1960s. Her essays consist of pen-portraits and humorous essays that represent experiences and issues related to gender as well as the follies and foibles of the middle-class, while her stories tend to be college romances or profound studies in character and atmosphere. 

The Deccan Sun was published in 2025 by Penguin Random House. 

 January 2026