Attia Hosain

Attia Hosain
Born	1913
Died	1998
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Indian
Genre	Novels

Attia Hosain (1913–1998) was a writer and broadcaster who hailed from Undivided India and worked for many years in the UK. She wrote two acclaimed books, being the semi-autobiographical Sunlight on a broken column and a collection of short stories named Phoenix fled.

Attia was born in 1913 in Lucknow into a rich, feudal land-owning Sunni Muslim family. Her father, Sheikh Shahid Husain Kidwai, was the taluqdar of Gadia, a large estate in Barabanki district. Her mother, Nisar Fatima, daughter of Syed Maqbool Hussain Alvi of Kakori, hailed from a family of educated professionals rather than land-owners. Attia was the third of five children. She had two elder sisters, Zakia and Razia, and two younger brothers, Reshad Husain and Fuad Hussain. Reshad, who remained a citizen of India, became a diplomat and served as India's High Commissioner to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in the 1960s. His wife, Asif Begum, was a daughter of Sir Fazl-i-Hussain, a prominent politician of undivided Punjab, belonging to the Unionist Party. Fuad (1928-68) emigrated to Pakistan at partition, became a fighter pilot in the Pakistan Air Force, and witnessed active duty during the Indo-Pak war of 1965.

Attia's father died when she was less than eleven years old, and she was raised by her mother. She was schooled at La Martiniere Girls' College in Lucknow. At the same time, her mother arranged for her to be tutored at home by Muslim clergymmen in the Quran and other Islamic texts. After completing school at age 15, she attended Isabella Thoburn College and Lucknow University.

In 1933, aged 20, she was married to her first cousin, Ali Bahadur Habibullah, the second son of her mother's sister. Ali's father was the Taluqdar of Saidanpur, another large estate in Barabanki district. They were blessed with two children, a son Waris Ahmed Habibullah and a daughter, Shama Habibullah, both of whom are film-makers based in the UK.

...
Wikipedia