Qurratulain Hyder was one of the most influential and successful progressive writers post Independence. She was bilingual, writing and translating in both Urdu and English. Her literary life was rich as a novelist and a short story writer, an academic, and a journalist. Her magnum opus, ‘Aag Ka Dariya’ is her best known work. The women in her stories live layered lives often in gray areas between theoretical morality and unforgiving reality. She was born in Aligarh into a literary family and completed her education there.  She then studied at Indraprastha College in Delhi and moved to Pakistan in 1947. Later she moved to England, but found her way back home to India, where she lived and wrote until her demise in 2007.