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The Hidden Garden: Mir Taqi Mir is a book by Gopi Chand Narang, translated from Urdu by Surinder Deol. It joins a biography of the eighteenth-century poet Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir (1723–1810) with a selection of his ghazals and an account of his poetic language. It is a printed book, not a film or documentary, and the sources behind this guide do not cover any screen adaptation.
What the book is
The title is a single volume published by Penguin Random House India. Its publisher’s page lists a hardback edition under ISBN 9780670095001. A separate Google Books catalog record gives ISBN 9789353052898. The two identifiers may refer to different editions or formats, so check the ISBN against the specific listing you are reading before you order a copy.
| Identifier | Where it appears | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISBN 9780670095001 | Penguin Random House India publisher page | Hardback | The publisher lists this as the hardback edition. |
| ISBN 9789353052898 | Google Books catalog record | Not stated | Edition details, including format, are not stated in the catalog record used here. |
Author and translator credits are consistent across the sources: Narang wrote the book in Urdu, and Deol rendered it into English. Publisher listings also name Amazon among buying options. Current stock, price and region-specific availability were not established for this guide, so confirm them on the live page before purchase.
What the book covers
The publisher presents the book as an introduction to Mir’s life and to his poetry. It places particular weight on his poetic language and on the sources he drew from: Braj, Persian, Delhi Urdu and Awadhi. That is the publisher’s own framing of the book’s scope rather than a neutral summary, and it is worth reading the rest of this section with that in mind.
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The biography
The book’s biographical strand is the part a reader is most likely to expect from its title. The publisher’s description places Mir among the major figures of Urdu poetry, and the book is positioned as a life of the poet as well as a study of his verse. This guide does not independently check the chronology of Mir’s life, his manuscript history or the dating of individual poems; those points rest on the book itself and on the sources it cites.
The selected ghazals
A reviewer, Mohammad Asim Siddiqui, writing in Scroll.in in 2021, reports that the book includes fifty selected ghazals. The selection is the practical centre of the volume for a reader who wants to see Mir’s verse on the page alongside commentary. The review’s count describes the edition it reviewed in 2021; it does not establish how many ghazals later printings or other formats contain.
Mir’s language
The book’s analysis of Mir’s diction is its most distinctive feature. According to the Scroll.in review, Narang examines Mir’s turns of phrase, his word choices and the personality that comes through in the poems. The review also describes Narang’s treatment of how Mir wove together Persian phraseology and regional forms, including Braj, Delhi’s Khari Boli and Awadhi.
Who Mir was, as the book presents him
Mir Muhammad Taqi Mir lived from 1723 to 1810, according to the publisher. The Scroll.in review describes him as primarily a ghazal poet who also wrote masnavis, qasidas and rubais. It reports that his collected works, the Kulliyaat, were published by Fort William College in 1811, a year after his death.
The review also cites a figure of more than thirteen thousand couplets attributed to Mir’s output. This number appears in the 2021 Scroll.in review and is not checked against a primary catalog or manuscript source here, so treat it as the reviewer’s figure rather than an established count.
Narang’s view of Persian in Mir’s verse
The review quotes Narang on the subject: “the highly creative absorption and naturalisation of Persian elements in standard Urdu is a glittering spot of Mir’s poetry.” The sentence is presented as Narang’s judgment, and it captures the book’s central interest: how Mir made Persian material feel native to Urdu. The publisher, for its part, calls Mir “the god of Urdu poesy (Khuda-e Sukhan)”. That phrase describes the publisher’s view of his reputation; it is not a formal title.
How the review judges the book
Siddiqui’s review is the most detailed independent assessment available for this guide. It credits the book with close attention to Mir’s language and personality. It also notes that the discussion can be sparse and repetitive in places. Those two judgments together are a useful guide for readers: the book is strongest where it stays close to the verse, and less consistent where it covers familiar ground at length. Because this is one reviewer’s reading from 2021, a reader who wants a second opinion should look for other reviews.
Practical checklist before you buy or borrow
- Confirm the ISBN on the listing matches the edition you want: 9780670095001 for the publisher’s hardback, or 9789353052898 as recorded by Google Books.
- Check the format, page count and publication details, which the sources used here do not fully state.
- Check that the listing includes the selection of fifty ghazals before you assume it matches the 2021 review.
- Check current price, stock and region on the seller’s page. These were not verified for this guide.
- If you read Urdu, the book is a translation, and its quoted couplets reflect the translation used in the source, not an independently checked rendering.
Limits of what is established
The facts about the book’s authorship, translation, publisher and central content are consistent across the publisher’s page, the Google Books record and the 2021 review. Several other points rest on a single source. Mir’s dates and output figures come from the publisher and the review. The couplet count is the reviewer’s figure, not a verified total. The translations of individual couplets have not been checked against the Urdu. Prices, stock and availability change over time and were not established here.
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For a reader deciding whether this book suits them, the question is less about whether the subject is covered and more about how deeply they want the Persian and regional-language analysis, and whether they want Mir’s verse in English with commentary.
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