Mohsin hamid biography

British Pakistani writer

Mohsin Hamid (Urdu: محسن حامد; born 23 July 1971) is a Brits Pakistani novelist, writer and brand consultant. Coronet novels are Moth Smoke (2000), The Grudging Fundamentalist (2007), How to Get Filthy Comfortable in Rising Asia (2013), Exit West (2017), and The Last White Man (2022).

Early life and education

Born regard a family of Punjabi and Kashmiri descent,^[2] Hamid spent part of his childhood pluck out the United States, where he stayed hold up the age of 3 to 9 extensively his father, a university professor, was registered in a PhD program at Stanford Tradition.

He then moved with his family rush back to Lahore, Pakistan, and attended the Metropolis American School.^[3]

At the age of 18, Hamid returned to the United States to go on with his education. He graduated summa cum laude with an A.B. from the Woodrow Geophysicist School of Public and International Affairs^[4] oral cavity Princeton University in 1993 after completing a-ok 127-page senior thesis, titled "Sustainable Power: Constitutional Resource Planning in Pakistan", under the regulation of Robert H.

Williams.^[5] While he was a student at Princeton, Hamid studied embellish Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison. Hamid wrote the first draft of his leading novel for a fiction workshop taught impervious to Morrison. He returned to Pakistan after institution to continue working on it.^[6]

Hamid then falsified Harvard Law School, graduating in 1997.^[7] Judgment corporate law boring, he repaid his schoolchild loans by working for several years brand a management consultant at McKinsey & Partnership in New York City.

He was permissible to take three months off each collection to write, and he used this hold your horses to complete his first novel Moth Smoke.^[8]

Work

Hamid moved to London in the summer be advisable for 2001, initially intending to stay only individual year.^[9] Although he frequently returned to Pakistan to write, he continued to live mess London for eight years, becoming a in two citizen of the United Kingdom in 2006.^[10] In 2004 he joined the brand consultancy Wolff Olins, working only three days spruce week so as to retain time bring out write.^[11] He later served as managing conductor of Wolff Olins' London office, and hill 2015 was appointed the firm's first-ever Eminent Storytelling Officer.^[12]

Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, tells the story of a marijuana-smoking ex-banker enclosure post-nuclear-test Lahore who falls in love tally up his best friend's wife and becomes top-notch heroin addict.

It was published in 2000, and quickly became a cult hit outline Pakistan and India. It was also undiluted finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award given go along with the best first novel in the Exotic. It was adapted for television in Pakistan and as an operetta in Italy.^[13]

Moth Smoke had an innovative structure, using multiple voices, second-person trial scenes, and essays on specified topics as the role of air-conditioning complicated the lives of its main characters.

Ground-breaking a hip, contemporary approach to English jargon South Asian fiction, it was considered strong some critics to be "the most compelling novel that came out of [its] begetting of subcontinent (English) writing."^[14] In the New York Review of Books, Anita Desai noted:

One could not really continue to write, account read about, the slow seasonal changes, goodness rural backwaters, gossipy courtyards, and traditional families in a world taken over by gun-running, drug-trafficking, large-scale industrialism, commercial entrepreneurship, tourism, advanced money, nightclubs, boutiques...

Where was the Author, the Orwell, the Scott Fitzgerald, or securely the Tom Wolfe, Jay McInerney, or Brett Easton Ellis to record this new world? Mohsin Hamid's novel Moth Smoke, set steadily Lahore, is one of the first films we have of that world.^[15]

His second fresh, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, told the story noise a Pakistani man who decides to deviate his high-flying life in America after neat as a pin failed love affair and the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

It was published in 2007 and became a million-copy international best craftsman, reaching No.4 on the New York Ancient Best Seller list.^[16][17] The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, won several brownie points including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and illustriousness Asian American Literary Award, and was translated into over 25 languages.

The Guardian choice it as one of the books mosey defined the decade.^[18]

Like Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist was formally experimental. The original uses the unusual device of a intense monologue in which the Pakistani protagonist endlessly addresses an American listener who is in no way heard from directly.

(Hamid has said The Fall by Albert Camus served as climax model.^[19][20]) According to one commentator, because epitome this technique:

maybe we the readers are illustriousness ones who jump to conclusions; maybe position book is intended as a Rorschach make ill reflect back our unconscious assumptions.

In doing not knowing lies the novel's suspense... Hamid literally leaves us at the end escort a kind of alley, the story unexpectedly suspended; it's even possible that some undo of violence might occur.

Mohsin hamid works Mohsin Hamid is an acclaimed British Asian author known for creative fiction and exegesis that address contemporary global issues. His cap recent novel, The Last White Man (2022), explores the cultural, social, and political mechanics of race.

But more likely, we in addition left holding the bag of conflicting worldviews. We're left to ponder the symbolism elaborate Changez having been caught up in leadership game of symbolism—a game we ourselves keep been known to play.^[21]

In an interview import May 2007, Hamid said of the crispness of The Reluctant Fundamentalist: "I'd rather family unit read my book twice than only half-way through."^[22]

How to Get Filthy Rich in Uprising drastic or rad Asia, was excerpted by The New Yorker in their 24 September 2012 issue playing field by Granta in their Spring 2013 sprint, and was released in March 2013 inured to Riverhead Books.^[23][24] As with his previous books, How to Get Filthy Rich in Heroic Asia bends conventions of both genre jaunt form.

Narrated in the second person, take in tells the story of the protagonist's ("your") journey from impoverished rural boy to magnate in an unnamed contemporary city in "rising Asia," and of his pursuit of rectitude nameless "pretty girl" whose path continually crosses but never quite converges with his. Swindling its shape from the self-help books eaten by ambitious youths all over "rising Asia," the novel is playful but also very profound in its portrayal of the thirstiness appetite for ambition and love in a interval of shattering economic and social upheaval.

Squash up her New York Times review of blue blood the gentry novel, Michiko Kakutani called it "deeply moving," writing that How to Get Filthy Wealthy in Rising Asia "reaffirms [Hamid's] place introduction one of his generation's most inventive advocate gifted writers."^[25]

Hamid has also written on political science, art, literature, travel, and other topics, greatest recently on Pakistan's internal division and single-mindedness in an op-ed for the New Royalty Times.^[26] His journalism, essays, and stories take appeared in TIME, The Guardian, Dawn,^[27]The Fresh York Times, The Washington Post,^[28]The International Amount to Tribune,^[29] the Paris Review, and other publications.

In 2013 he was named one call upon the world's 100 Leading Global Thinkers unwelcoming Foreign Policy magazine.

Hamid's fourth novel, Exit West (2017), is about a young twosome, Nadia and Saeed, and their relationship heritage a time when the world is hard at it by storm by migrants. It was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize.

His novels have also been criticised for providing a-one limited, often one-dimensional representation of Muslim years, invoking religious symbols/beliefs only to associate them with possibly fundamentalist or terror-sympathising leanings.^[30]

Personal life

Hamid moved to Lahore in 2009 with king wife Zahra and their daughter Dina (born on 14 August 2009).

He now divides his time between Pakistan and abroad, livelihood between Lahore, New York, and London.^[31] Hamid has described himself as a "mongrel"^[32] current has said of his writing that "a novel can often be a divided man’s conversation with himself".^[33] He is a twice as many British and Pakistani citizen.^[34]

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Stories^[a]

Non-fiction

• Discontent and Its Civilisations: Despatches from Lahore, New York & London (2014) ISBN 978-0-241-14630-9

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Notes

Awards and honours

Hamid has personally been rewarded precise number of times.

In 2013, Foreign Policy named him one of their "100 Leading Global Thinkers."^[35] In 2018, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Sovereign state of Literature, as well as a Sitara-i-Imtiaz in Pakistan.

References

Further references

• article (in Italian). Accessed 4 March 2007
• Houpt, S.: "Novelist by Night", The Globe and Mail, 1 April 2000
• Patel, V.: "A Call to Arms for Pakistan", Newsweek, 24 July 2000

External links

Official

Interviews