This brilliant translation of Ismat Chughtai’s original Urdu novel, Ajeeb Aadmi is the riveting story of Dharam Dev, the famous actor, director and producer, and his all-consuming and doomed passion for Zarina Jamal, the young dancer from Madras whom he brings to Bombay and transforms into a charismatic actress. When Zarina abandons him, he is overwrought and dies of an overdose, friendless and alone. In an interview, Chughtai described this novel about the Bombay film industry as a story based on the life of a producer-director who killed himself after the dancer he had made into a star left him in the lurch.