Aamer Hussein

Hussein grew up in Karachi, where he attended Lady Jennings School and the Convent of Jesus and Mary. He spent most summers with his mother's family in India. He studied in Ooty, South India, for two years before moving to London in 1970. Hussein is fluent in seven languages: English, Urdu, Hindi, French, Italian, Spanish and Persian.Claire Chambers, [https://books.google.com/books?id=oGh5Yh3KaeUC&dq=aamer+hussein+languages+&pg=PA76 British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers], Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, p. 76.

He read Persian, Urdu and History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and later taught Urdu for many years at the SOAS Language Centre.[http://www.newwritingpartnership.org.uk/nwp/site/writer-87.html Aamer Hussein biography], New Writing Worlds, 2005. He has since lectured in the English Department at Queen Mary, University of London, was Director of the MA programme in National and International Literatures at the School of Advanced Study's Institute of English Studies (Senate House)(2005–08) and is now Professorial Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton,[http://www.southampton.ac.uk/english/about/staff/ah1j06.page "Our staff"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101132856/http://www.southampton.ac.uk/english/about/staff/ah1j06.page |date=1 November 2014 }}, University of Southampton. as well as a professorial research associate at the Centre for the Study of Pakistan.Sajid Khan Lodhy, [http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2014/03/02/comment/a-passion-for-writing/ "A passion for writing – Interview: Aamer Hussein"], Pakistan Today, 2 March 2014. He has also held writing fellowships at the University of Southampton and at Imperial College London, and served as a judge for the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation (2009),[http://www.banipaltrust.org.uk/prize/judges2009.cfm Judges of the 2009 Prize] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141101154316/http://www.banipaltrust.org.uk/prize/judges2009.cfm |date=1 November 2014 }}, Banipal Trust for Arabic Literature. the Impac Prize (2008), the Commonwealth Prize (2007) and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2002).{{Citation needed|date=November 2013}} He is a trustee of the magazine of international contemporary writing Wasafiri.[http://www.wasafiri.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=67 Trustees] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029211004/http://www.wasafiri.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=67 |date=29 October 2013 }}, Wasafiri.

Some of Hussein's earliest stories, such as "The Colour of a Loved Person's Eyes", "Little Tales", "Your Children" and "Karima", appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the journals Critical Quarterly and Artrage, and anthologies including Colours of a New Day: Writing for South Africa (Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), God: An Anthology of Fiction (Serpent's Tail, 1992) and Border Lines: Stories of Exile & Home (Serpent's Tail, 1994). His first collection of stories, Mirror to the Sun, was published in 1993. Since then, to increasing critical acclaim from contemporaries such as Shena Mackay, William Palmer, Mary Flanagan, Amit Chaudhuri and Tabish Khair, he has published four further collections – This Other Salt (1999), Turquoise (2002), Cactus Town (2003), and Insomnia (2007) – as well as the novella, Another Gulmohar Tree (2009) and the novel The Cloud Messenger (2011). He has also edited a volume of stories by Pakistani women, Kahani (2005), which includes his own translations from the Urdu of Altaf Fatima, Khalida Hussain and Hijab Imtiaz Ali. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, "probably the first writer of Pakistani origin to be elected".{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20100208230801/http://www.desilit.org/weblog/archives/2007/10/aamer_hussein_a.html "Aamer Hussein: A Tale of Two Languages"]}}, Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan), 7 October 2007. His reviews have appeared in the Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, the New Statesman and are now regularly seen on the book pages of The Independent. He has also written essays on Urdu literature for The Annual of Urdu Studies and Moving Worlds, and in 2012, he published a selection of stories in Urdu in the Karachi journal Duniyazad.

• This Other Salt (Saqi Books, 1999)
• Turquoise (Saqi Books, 2002)
• Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007)
• Another Gulmohar Tree (Telegram Books, 2009)
• The Cloud Messenger (Telegram Books, 2011)
• The Swan's Wife (ILQA, 2014; Repub. as 37 Bridges, HarperCollins, 2015)

{{Reflist|30em}}

• [http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/poeboes-podcast-aamer-hussein/ Podcast Interview With Hussein by André Naffis]
• [http://www.salidaa.org.uk/salidaa/docrep/docs/projects/essays/literature/AHussein/docm_render.html Aamer Hussein on SALIDAA's website]
• [http://aamerhussein.com/ Aamer Hussein official website.]
• Aamer Hussein, [https://web.archive.org/web/20141101182551/http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main14.asp?filename=hub102205This_Other_Salt.asp "This Other Salt"], 22 October 2005.

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Category:1955 births

Category:Living people

Category:Pakistani male short story writers

Category:Pakistani short story writers

Category:British short story writers

Category:Alumni of SOAS University of London

Category:Academics of Queen Mary University of London

Category:Academics of the University of Southampton

Category:Academics of Imperial College London

Category:Academics of the School of Advanced Study

Category:Pakistani emigrants to the United Kingdom

Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature

Category:Writers from Karachi

Category:Pakistani expatriates in India