 His serialized novel "Fasana-e-Azad" (The Tale of Azad), which appeared between 1878 and 1883 as a regular supplement in his paper, was influenced by novels like "The Pickwick Papers" and "Don Quixote", as well as the epic romances (dastan) of Persian and Urdu.Spanning over three thousand pages, the novel narrates the adventures of the protagonist, Azad, through the streets of Lucknow to the battlefields of the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).It was first published in 1881 by Munshi Naval Kishore Press.