Imran Series

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Imran Series is Ibne Safi’s second best-selling Urdu spy novels series. The first novel, Khaufnaak Imarat (The Terrifying Building), was published in October 1955. Each book in the series used to be a complete novel, however, some stories spanned over two or more books.

1 Overview
2 Characters in Imran Series
3 Reception
4 Plagiarism
5 Continuance of Imran Series by Other Authors
6 See also
7 External Links

[edit] Overview

Following the footsteps of the first best-selling series, Jasoosi Dunya, this series features Ali Imran - a playful, yet deceiving personality. He is a bright young Oxford graduate with M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. His comical and apparently incompetent persona hides his identity as head of a secret service. This series has been widely acclaimed for its high literary quality and strong character development.

Imran Series explains the workings of a country's Secret Service that operates from the capital of the country (supposed by many to be Pakistan. Although Ibn-e-Safi was careful to never explicitly state this, villains often refer to the country as the "one from South-East Asia". The Secret Service is administered by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Sir Sultan, who offers Imran the position as its head after getting personal help from him in "Raat ka Shahzadah" (The Prince of Night - #8).

[edit] Characters in Imran Series

One of Ibn-e-Safi's distinguished writing qualitites include formation and development of characters. He has established characters in such a fashion that they appear to be real and materialized.

Imran Series has a range of diverse, colorful, and sentient characters. Some of the members of secret service include X2 (played by Ali Imran and Tahir aka BlackZero), Juliana Fitzwater, Safdar Saeed, Tanveer Ashraf , Khawar, Choohan, Nomani , Siddeequi, etc. Imran's family include Karam-Rahman (also mentioned as Abdul Rahman in initial books), Amma Bi, and Surayya. Imran's escorts include Joseph Mugunda, Sulaiman, and his wife Gul-Rukh.

For a detailed account of characters appearing in Imran Series, please visit more links at the bottom of this page.

[edit] Reception

The series has been acclaimed for its characterisation and high literary quality. It began with Khaufnak Imarat (The Fearful Building), and ended with Aakhri Aadmi (The Last Man), unfinished at the time of Ibn-e-Safi's death.

[edit] Plagiarism

During 1960-1963, while Ibn-e-Safi was suffering from schizophrenia, many amateur writers started posing themselves as Ibn-e-Safi and produced third class copies of his work, distorting the character of not only Ali Imran, but also of Colonel Faridi and Captain Hameed. These acts of vandalism were reported by Ibn-e-Safi himself in the paish-rus (preface) of "Dairh Matwaalay" (One and a Half Amused - #42) (which was the novel he returned with after his recovery). Some writers and publishers still continue to write on Safi's characters, much to the annoyance of many fans. Safi used to mention fans' complaints sometimes in the prefaces, and mocked the fake publishers and writers in his own witty style.

[edit] Continuance of Imran Series by Other Authors

Some writers who acquired fame by writing their own versions of Imran Series (specially after the death of Ibn-e-Safi) include Mazhar Kaleem, Safdar Shaheen, Ibn-e-Rahat, Mushtaq Ahmed Qureshi, H Iqbal, MA Rahat, MA Sajid, and Zaheer Ahmed. Mazhar Kaleem is still writing novels and enjoys enough fan-following. He has introduced many new characters in the series. Fans of Ibn-e-Safi, however, dismiss Kaleem's books, arguing that Kaleem distorted the original 'feel' of the series, and that he deformed the key characteristics of many characters, including Ali Imran. Nevertheless, his novels have a significant readership.

Some of the differences between Ibn-e-Safi's and Mazhar Kaleem's books are as follows:

Ibn-e-Safi's writing style can mostly be categorized under mystery fiction (with the excpetions of a few adventures). Mazhar Kaleem, however, does not rely on mystery but on action-oriented situational twists, with the overall plot of the story revealed in the first few chapters.
Ibn-e-Safi's Ali Imran, although highly intelligent, is not a super-human; Kaleem portrays him as a "man of all qualities" and "undestructable".
Although Ibn-e-Safi never explicitly stated the name of Imran's country, he used to mention the real names of other countries and cities. Kaleem uses aliases for all country and city names (except Israel).
Ibn-e-Safi brought Ali Imran and Colonel Faridi together just once in his novels (and that too in Jasoosi Dunya special number). Kaleem has done that many times, openly favoring Ali Imran against Faridi. (Kaleem has not written any story with Faridi as the main protagonist.)
Many main characters created by Ibn-e-Safi are not present in Kaleem's books. Examples include Roshee, Zafar-ul-Mulk, Jameson, Sing Hee, T3B and others. (It is interesting to note that Ibn-e-Safi threatened to take legal action against those writers and publishers who would use the characters of Zafar-ul-Mulk and Jameson in their own publications.) Some of the main characters introduced by Kaleem are Captain Shakeel, Juana, Tiger, Shagal, Madaam Rikha, Sualeha, Fisal Jaan, Col. Hillgard, and Inspecter Arif.