Nadeem Aslam

Nadeem Aslam (born 11 July 1966[1] in Gujranwala, Pakistan) is a prize-winning British Pakistani novelist.

Early life

Nadeem Aslam moved with his family to the UK aged 14 when his father, a Communist, fled President Zia's regime. The family settled in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. He later studied biochemistry at the University of Manchester, but left in his third year to become a writer.[2]

Career

At 13, Aslam published his first short story in Urdu in a Pakistani newspaper.

His 1993 debut novel, Season of the Rainbirds, set in rural Pakistan, won the Betty Trask and the Author's Club First Novel Award.

His next novel, 2004's Maps for Lost Lovers, is set in the midst of an immigrant Pakistani community in an English town in the north. The novel took him more than a decade to complete, and won the Kiriyama Prize.[3]

Aslam's third novel, The Wasted Vigil, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in September, 2008.[4] It is set in Afghanistan. He traveled to Afghanistan during the writing of the book;[5] but had never visited the country before writing the first draft.[6] On 11 February 2011, it was short-listed for the Warwick Prize for Writing [7]

Aslam's fourth novel is The Blind Man's Garden (2013). It is set in Western Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan and looks at the War on Terror through the eyes of local, Islamist characters. It contains also a love story loosely based on the traditional Punjabi romance of Heer Ranjha.

He has mentioned Vasko Popa, Ivan V. Lalić, Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Herman Melville, John Berger, VS Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje, and Bruno Schulz.[5] as the writers that he admires.

His writings have been compared to those by Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Kiran Desai. Aslam received an Encore in 2005. He writes his drafts in longhand and prefers extreme isolation when working.[8]

Bibliography

Awards

References

  1. The Guardian (Guardian Media). 11 July 2014. p. 33. Missing or empty |title= (help);
  2. "Nadeem Aslam". British Council Literature. British Council. Retrieved 2016-01-14.
  3. "Press Room". The Kiriyama Prize. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
  4. Random House
  5. 1 2 Bookbrowse.com
  6. BBC World Service, The Word, 14 October 2008
  7. The Warwick Prize for Writing, 2011 archive. Retrieved 1 November 2015
  8. Rees, Jasper (2004-06-14). "Nadeem Aslam". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
  9. Ashlin Mathew (November 22, 2013). "Three Indians in race for DSC prize for South Asian Literature 2014". India Today. Retrieved November 22, 2013.
  10. "Prize Citation for Nadeem Aslam". Windham–Campbell Literature Prize. March 7, 2014. Retrieved March 8, 2014.

External links

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