Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi (b. 1923) is the author of four books, and has received the Hilal-i-Imtiaz and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, two of the most coveted arts awards in Pakistan. Matt Reeck has published translations and poetry in the United States and India, and is the recipient of a Fulbright and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEN Foundation. Aftab Ahmad is Lecturer in Hindi-Urdu at Columbia University.

"Profoundly good-humored, genuinely wise, and very often laugh-out-loud funny....Yousufi has opinions on the moral conduct of dogs, the joys of ailing, flying kites from rooftops, and why Jewish prophets all rode donkeys. He brings to life a world where machine-guns are taken to weddings and where poor women dye their dung-covered floors to look like carpets. Whether he’s talking about a stolen lumber shipment or a horse that bolts at the sight of funerals, Yousufi’s witty storytelling is deftly captured in this English translation, which survives in spite of a desperate need for footnotes and a glossary, providing a lighthearted (if frequently unguided) plunge into one of the treasures of contemporary Pakistani culture."