Staff Reporter
Karachi
Renowned fiction writer, literary critic and academic, Dr Asif Farrukhi, passed away at the age of 60 in Karachi on Monday.
Farrukhi, a diabetic patient, had been unwell for the past few days, people close to him said.
A public health physician by training, Farrukhi was the professor of practice, Arzu Programme for Languages and Literature, and the director of the Arzu Centre for Regional Languages and Humanities at Habib University.
“Habib University today has lost a key founding faculty member of its community, Dr Asif Aslam Farrukhi,” the varsity said. Farrukhi was also a founder member of the Karachi Literature Festival and contributed regularly to English-language press.
After completing his MBBS at the Dow Medical College, Karachi in 1984, Farrukhi obtained a Masters in Public Health with a concentration in International Health from Harvard University in 1988, according to his profile provided by Habib University.
He also attended a short course on Health Economics and Financing from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2012 and served as an instructor in Community Health Sciences at the Aga Khan University, Karachi.
Between 1994 and 2014, he served as the health and nutrition programme officer at Unicef Karachi.
Known for his short stories and essays, Dr Farrukhi’s academic and research interests were in literature and language. Seven collections of his short fiction stories and two of critical essays were published.
He also published translations of prose and poetry from modern and classical writers.
His recent publications included a collection of new critical essays on Manto and Look At The City From Here — an anthology of writings about Karachi, according to his HU profile. Two of his adaptations have been staged in Karachi.
