Anees Jung

Born in Rourkela, Anees hails from an aristocratic family in Hyderabad – her father, Nawab Hosh Yar Jung, was a renowned scholar and poet, and served as the musahib (adviser) to the last Nizam (prince) of Hyderabad State. Her mother and brother are also noted Urdu poets. After schooling and college at Osmania University in Hyderabad, she went to the United States for higher studies at University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where she did her Masters in Sociology and American Studies.

She started her career in writing with the Youth Times, a Times of India publication, where she worked as a journalist and editor (1976 to 1979). She has subsequently worked for the Christian Science Monitor and International Herald Tribune. Anees Jung lives in Delhi.

Books

Jung came into the limelight with the publication of Unveiling India in 1987, which is a travel diary focusing on interviews with women. She has written several subsequent books on the same, talking to women about their everyday lives, including Night of the New Moon: Encounters with Muslim women in India. (1993), Seven Sisters (1994). Breaking the Silence (1997) is based on conversations on women's lives from around the world. Beyond the Courtyard (2003) is based on interviews with the daughters of the women she had talked to first in Unveiling India, and many of the horrifying tales continue.

Anees Jung's Lost Spring: Stories of stolen childhood (2005) focuses on children from deprived backgrounds, and includes the story of Idrees, a child who is kidnapped and forced to work in the carpet industry in Mirzapur. Others are maltreated by alcoholic fathers or married off early or sexually abused, though some find refuge in schools set up by well-meaning NGOs. A section of this book is part of the English curriculum in many Indian schools Jung is noted for her lively and vivid descriptions.

Other books by Jung include When a place becomes a person

(1977) and The Song of India (1990).