A Life in Words, the first complete translation of Ismat Chughtai's celebrated memoir Kaghazi hai Pairahan, provides a delightful account of several crucial years of her life. Along side vivid descriptions of her childhood years are the conflicted experiences of growing up in a large Muslim family during the early decades of the twentieth century. Chughtai is searingly honest about her fight to get an education and the struggle to find her own voice as a writer. The result is a compellingly readable memoir by one of the most significant Urdu writers of all time.