The Shore and the Wave,a novel by Pakistan's leading writers,presents a vivid pictures of the marital and social entanglements of middle-class India. Farkhundanagar, the city in which the story develops, is in fact Hydreabad,capital of the largely princely state in central India which survived under the aegis of the paramount British power until 1947,and maintained a precarious existence until in 1956 it disappeared as a separate entity in the redrawing if India's internal political boundaries on linguistic lines. Aziz Ahmad,at the time when The Shore and the Wave was written,had spent most of his life there. In the second chapter he speaks of the 'three tides westernization' that had swept over it,and the novel describes the impact upon the educated,well-to-do sections of Hyderabad society of the 'third tide' in the period up to the eve of Independence. The present English version was done by Ralph Russell with the author's close cooperation and embodies revisions which he wished to make.