AAG KA DARYA: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY IN THE CONTEXT OF WORLDLITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

Abstract

This research article presents a comparative and philosophical analysis of Qurratulain Hyder's landmark novel Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire) within the intersection of global literary traditions, existential philosophy, and postcolonial theory. The central thesis argues that the novel transcends its role as a chronological narrative of two and a half millennia of South Asian history, functioning instead as a cosmic metaphor for existential anguish,
temporal determinism, the failure of communication, and the crisis of post-colonial identity. Through a comparative methodology, the study correlates Hyder's narrative with Albert Camus's Absurdism, Milan Kundera's dialectic of memory and forgetting, Fariduddin Attar's mystical allegories in Mantiq-ut-Tayr, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce's stream of consciousness technique, Edward Said's post-colonial framework, and Samuel
Beckett's theatre of the absurd. The article also offers a sustained analysis of the character Champa as an archetype of the subcontinent's collective feminine memory, a reading largely absent from prior Urdu scholarship.
Urdu critical voices including Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Dr. Anwar Sadeed, and Ale Ahmad Suroor are integrated  to bridge national and international critical traditions. The study concludes that the universality of Aag Ka Darya
is neither coincidental nor regional, but an earned place in the collective consciousness of world literature.