Nadeem Aslam

Nadeem Aslam (Gujranwala, Pakistan, 1966) is one of Great Britain’s best known writers. He has been living in England since the age of fourteen after his family was obliged to leave Pakistan due to his father’s communist beliefs. He started to study Biochemistry but soon left it to devote himself full time to writing. His first novel, Season of the Rainbirds (1993), which is set in rural Pakistan, won the Betty Trask Prize and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Wider recognition came with his second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers (published in Spanish as Mapa para amantes perdidos – Alfaguara, 2005), which is about a Pakistani community in a town in Yorkshire, in the north of England. He received the Kiriyama Prize for this book, which took ten years to write. His next book titled The Wasted Vigil (published in Spanish as La casa de los sentidos – Alfaguara, 2009) and set in Afghanistan, was a finalist for the Warwick Prize for Writing. His most recent novel, also set in Afghanistan, is The Blind Man’s Garden (recently published in Spanish as El jardín del hombre ciego – Mondadori, 2013).