Birth—1966
Where—Gujranwala
Education— University of Manchester
Currently—London

Bibliography

• The Golden Legend (2017)

• The Blind Man’s Garden (2013)

• The Wasted Vigil (2008)

• Maps for Lost Lovers (2004)

• Season of the Rainbirds (1993)

He studied Biochemistry at the University of Manchester, but left to become a writer.

His novel Maps for Lost Lovers, winner of the Kuriyama Prize, took him more than a decade to complete. Aslam has stated that the first chapter alone took five years to complete, and that the following story in the book took seven months to complete before rejecting it. At the end, he kept only one sentence of the seventy pages written. Aslam’s latest novel, The Wasted Vigil, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in September, 2008. It is set in Afghanistan. He traveled to Afghanistan during the writing of the book but had never visited the country before writing the first draft. On 11th February 2011, it was short-listed for the Warwick Prize For Writing.

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

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

Aslam is a fellow of Royal Society of Literature and currently lives in north London.

The Golden Legend
Nadeem Aslam (2017)
The novel opens with the death of the middle-aged architect Massud, who leaves behind his wife and collaborator Nargis. Together, they have created a collection of exquisite buildings and fought for culture in a hostile world. He is accidentally shot during the inauguration of a new library they’ve designed in the fictional city of Zamana