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Anees Jung is an Indian woman author, journalist and a columnist for major newspapers in India and abroad, whose most noted work, Unveiling India (1987) was a detailed chronicle of the lives of women in India, noted especially for the detailed depiction of Muslim women behind the purdah
Born in Hyderabad Anees hails from an aristocratic family in Hyderabad - her father, Nawab Hosh Yar Jung, was a renowned scholar and poet, and served as the musahib (adviser) to the last Nizam (prince) of Hyderabad State. Her mother and brother are also noted Urdu poets. After schooling and college at Osmania University in Hyderabad, she went to theUnited States for higher studies where she did her Masters in Sociology and American Studies.
She started her career in writing with the Youth Times, a Times of India publication, where she worked as a journalist and editor (1976 to 1979). Anees Jung lives in Delhi.
Books
Jung came into the limelight with the publication of Unveiling India in 1987, which is a travel diary focusing on interviews with women. She has written several subsequent books on the same, talking to women about their everyday lives, including Night of the New Moon: Encounters with Muslim women in India. (1993), Seven Sisters (1994). Breaking the Silence (1997) is based on conversations on women's lives from around the world. Beyond the Courtyard (2003) is based on interviews with the daughters of the women she had talked to first in Unveiling India, and many of the horrifying tales continue.
Anees Jung's Lost Spring: Stories of stolen childhood (2005) focuses on children from deprived backgrounds, and includes the story of Idrees, a child who is kidnapped and forced to work in the carpet industry in Mirzapur. Others are maltreated by alcoholic fathers or married off early or sexually abused, though some find refuge in schools set up by well-meaning NGOs. A section of this book is part of the English curriculum in many Indian schools
Other books by Jung include When a place becomes a person (1977) and The Song of India (1990).
Jung is noted for her lively and vivid descriptions, but she rarely provides any solution to the many problems she describes.
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