“Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Ghazal Cosmopolitan: The Culture and Craft of the Ghazal, is an indelible and highly recommended read for those seeking to appreciate the art and culture of the ghazal through the ages. The book centres on the acquired hybridity of the classical form of the ghazal through its variance and transmutation across the Arabo-Persian-Urdu canon and its eventual adaptation and evolvement into English in the United States. The multi-genre book, divided into four sections, spans a series of lyrical, craft and critical essays on language and the history, heritage and transformation of the ghazal, as well as essays on the culture and craft of its parent form, the qasida, and Hashmi’s original ghazals in English.”

— Hera Naguib in DAWN

“Shadab Zeest Hashmi first encountered the form as a child in Pakistan, listening to popular Pakistani singers sing ghazals in Urdu on her parents’ LPs. Urdu, a mix of courtly Persian and folksy Hindavi, adopted the ghazal form early on. “The ghazal,” she writes, “not only allows contraries to cohabit, but in the best compositions, it makes a demand to frame polarity in the same space.”

— Johanna Droubay in Reed Magazine