This summer I was awarded a GCSE in Urdu. I`m now inching towards an A-level in the language. I was inspired to take the plunge into the advanced qualification by the Edexcel exam board having a fascinating novel on their syllabus.

Published in 1962, Khadija Mastur`s Aangan [Courtyard] explores women`s lives in purdah during South Asia`s turbulent period of nationalist struggle, Partition and independence.

In the 20th century, Aangan didn`t get the recognition it deserved. For example, Lakshmi Holmstrom excluded it from her edited collection of fiction, The Inner Courtyard (1990). This is surprising, given the books` matching titles and shared interest in women`s stories, but it reflects the relative neglect paid to Mastur in the 1990s.

Happily, Mastur`s novel has gained greater prominence in the 21st century. Not only is the Urdu version on the UK curriculum but there have been two translations into English, as Inner Courtyard by Neelam Hussain and as The Women`s Courtyard by Daisy Rockwell. A Hindi translation was brought out by Khursheed Alam as recently as 2024. In 2018, there was also a popular TV drama adaptation, featuring actors such as Sonya Hussyn, Sajal Ali and Ahad Raza Mir.

While she leads readers to think Aangan may romanticise the enclosed spaces of elite Muslim households, Mastur wrong foots soapy idealism throughout. The novel`s progressive undertones and critique of patriarchy are conveyed forcefully through its characters and their constrained lives.

At Aangan`s core is Aliya, a clever, sharp-eyed young bibliophile who questions the conventions around her, without ever fully escaping them. Being entrusted with the keys to her uncle`s book cupboard is a route to freedom for her. Aliya will go on to study a bachelor`s in Urdu. Snooty Najma Aunty, with her master`s in English, looks down on the degree. Aliya is undaunted; for her Urdu literature is a source of enlightenment and rebellion.

In this, she differs from her older sister. Tehmina Apa reads romance novels which impart damaging ideals about men and love.

From childhood, Aliya witnesses tragedies that befall women who transgress social limits. Salma Aunty`s elopement with a peasant`s son leads to scandal and her eventual death. The life of Kusum, a neighbouring Hindu, is difficult because of her widow status. Tehmina`s fate is sealed when she falls in love with a cousin who is poor and joins a communist group. Aliya`s illiterate cousin Chammi has an arranged marriage that goes wrong in part because she loves another cousin.

These stories are dramatic rather than melodramatic.

Mastur`s realist narrative fills them with indignation, turning personal losses into withering critique.

The spectres of, first, colonialism and then Partition loom over the novel. Kusum is widowed when her husband dies in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Aliya`s anti-imperialist father is imprisoned by British authorities, leaving behind a family bowed down by financial and relationship pressures.

The Allies` atomic bombs on Japan horrify Asians.

Aliya works in Pakistan to help refugees from India. An uncle chooses another abode, in the short-lived Muslim `paradise` of Hyderabad, not knowing India will annex the state in 1948.

Yet Mastur does not focus on the sweep of history.

Instead, the disintegration of one household mirrors the fracturing of a nation. The Khilafat movement, the Muslim League`s struggle and broader anti colonial activism bubble in the background, their ripples felt as much in the domestic sphere as the public arena.

Mastur extends her censure of patriarchal norms to the enforced segregation of women. While purdah seems to shield women from the male gaze, it also isolates them, restricting their mobility and agency. Or, as Rockwell notes, it can trap them with an abuser. The danger is inside the house.

Yet the novel`s women are anything but passive. Even the victims are spirited and strive indomitably. And in her narrative arc, from a manipulated child to a woman who rejects the romantic fantasies imposed on her, Aliya resolves not to suffer like the others. She refuses to become `one more Aunty... born to wander aimlessly down the path of life, as the country continued on its quest for independence.

Pursued by Chammi`s urbane ex, Jameel, Aliya manages to stay steadfast even though she is attracted to him. She embraces autonomy, education and self worth. Not only is Aliya`s anti-marriage stance unusual but the language learner soon notices how distinctive Mastur`s voice is. Her prose is characterised by the sharp, expressive vernacular of women and children.

The novel is written in an economical, almost coded way.

It brims with familiar idioms, to which Mastur gives her own witty twist. For instance, when Aliya`s English teacher, Mrs Howard, comes to visit, the food is too spicy for her. The chillies turn to tears which drop from her eyes, a pithy way of evoking thegori`s predicament.

Elsewhere, Aliya uses a saying about not knowing when life`s fire will be quenched. With a child`s literalism she connects this muhavara [aphorism] to the blacksmith`s bellows in her UP town. Staying with fire, loved ones roast in an `oven of sorrows` or writhe in `the agonising fires of love,` to quote Rockwell`s vivid translation.

Most memorably, an aunt of Aliya`s remarks, `Girls... are the cows of God: you may drive them where you want, but they won`t say a word.` They may be silenced, but the novel`s girls are far from bovine. They find ways to upend their confinement: studying furiously, arranging their own marriages, organising kids into political rallies, or exchanging forbidden information through mosquito nets or half-closed doors. Though small, these acts of defiance show the resilience and ingenuity of women and girls.

Mastur is also adept at a repetition, which drives home vocabulary for learners like me, without ever becoming tedious.

This technique also has the benefit of revealing the family`s routines, people`s verbal tics and the fabric of everyday life.

Characters are always getting on or off their takhts, kneading flour to make rotis, lighting lanterns, moving bedding rolls here and there, or availing free electricity from streetlights to prepare for school. Najma is forever boasting about her MA, or Chammi declaring if she isn`t right, mera naam Chamminahin or `my name`s not Chammi.

In sum, Mastur`s Aangan exemplifies how language, metaphor and dialogue can transform small moments into meditations on bigger structures. Shabash to Edexcel for making it a set text! The columnist is a Professor of Global Literature at the University of York and author of five books. Bluesky: @clarachambara