Suhayl Saadi

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|quote=Psychoraag is not just
Midnight's Children-meets-Trainspotting.
Saadi is more thoughtful than Welsh or Rushdie.

|source=Angus Calder, The Sunday Herald{{Cite news|url=http://sarmed.netfirms.com/suhayl/NEW/books/psycho/calder_review.htm |title=Reviews: Saadi's all the rag |author=Angus Calder |author-link=Angus Calder |work=The Sunday Herald |date=25 April 2004 |quote='Namaste ji, salaam alaikum, sat sri akal, welcome tae The Junoon Show. Ah’m Zaf, zed ayy eff – an yer listenin' tae Radio Chaandnii oan wavelength 99.9 meters ... ' When Suhayl Saadi's collection of short stories The Burning Mirror appeared three years ago, grateful readers noticed, among his very varied prose repertoire, a superb ear for Scottish speech. In his first novel, the ventriloquist goes his dinger. Zaf's idiolect mingles Weegie patter with phrases and curses from several sub-continental languages, French, Gaelic, and, of course, guid auld Scots.}}

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Saadi's 2004 novel,{{Cite news|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/frontrow_20040514.shtml |title=Suhayl Saadi talks about Psychoraag, his 2004 novel set in an Asian community radio station in Glasgow during a six-hour show. |work=Front Row, BBC Radio 4 |date=14 May 2004}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.booksfromscotland.com/Books/Psychoraag-1845020626/Reviews |title=Reviews of Psychoraag on Books From Scotland |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060824215851/http://www.booksfromscotland.com/Books/Psychoraag-1845020626/Reviews |archivedate=24 August 2006}} Psychoraag, which won a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, was also shortlisted{{Cite web|url=http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/050131jamestaitblack.html |title=James Tait Black Prizes |work=University of Edinburgh News & Events |date=31 January 2005 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070212163000/http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/050131jamestaitblack.html |archivedate=12 February 2007}} for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and nominated for both the International Dublin Literary Award{{Cite web|url=http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2006/Titles/Saadi.htm |title=The 2006 Award: Psychoraag by Suhayl Saadi nominated |work=The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070417010150/http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2006/Titles/Saadi.htm |archivedate=17 April 2007}} and the National Literary Award (the Patras Bokhari Prize) in Pakistan.

The Scottish Book Trust designated Psychoraag one of the 100 Best Scottish Books of all time.{{Cite web|url=http://www.list.co.uk/articles/100-best-scottish-books/show:100/|title=100 Best Scottish Books of All Time |work=The List: Scottish Book Trust}} The French translation was released in November 2007 by the Paris-based publisher Éditions Métailié.{{Cite book|url=http://www.editions-metailie.com/indoc/psychoraag-de-suhayl-saadi-T919.htm |title=Bibliothèque écossaise: Psychoraag |author=Traduit de l'anglais par Jean-Charles Perquin et Samuel Baudry |publisher=Éditions Métailié |date=November 2007 |isbn=9782864246299 |language=French |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080329061041/http://www.editions-metailie.com/indoc/psychoraag-de-suhayl-saadi-T919.htm |archivedate=29 March 2008}}

Suhayl Saadi has written about subjects as diverse as psychedelic music, Sufism, the British pantomime, the future of creativity, and the relationship of literature to global politics, for many periodicals, including The Independent, The Times, The Herald, The Sunday Herald, The Scotsman, and Spike Magazine,{{Cite news|url=http://www.spikemagazine.com/0206-suhayl-saadi-censorship-in-the-uk.php |title=The Gods of the Door: Literary Censorship in the UK |author=Suhayl Saadi |work=Spike Magazine |date=February 2006 |quote=I should say that I am very lucky to be based in Scotland – a country which has produced many wonderful writers of fiction ... This corpus of work represents some of the most exciting, commercially successful and ground-breaking writing of the past three decades in the Anglophone world. Coda: Scotland is not a literary backwater.}} and for the British Council. His short story collection, The Burning Mirror,{{Cite news|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20010819/ai_n13961756 |title=Edinburgh Book Festival Footnotes: Celtic Writers for Breakfast |work=The Sunday Herald |date=19 August 2001 |quote=Chris Dolan rightly describes (The Burning Mirror) as "an impossible blend of Kelman, Toni Davidson and Rushdie. There is rhythm and blending of languages that is uniquely Scots-Asian." Saadi is a medical man whose story "Ninety-nine Kiss-o-grams" was shortlisted for the Macallan short story competition. Uniquely he provides a glossary of Pakistani and Glaswegian words for those who might find navigation difficult.}}{{Cite news|url=http://www.barcelonareview.com/rev/28.htm |title=Review of The Burning Mirror |author=Jill Adams |work=The Barcelona Review Issue 28 |date=January–February 2002 |quote=In "Ninety-nine Kiss-o-grams," the opening story, Sal is left a deed from his grandfather to a bit of land in Pakistan. He travels there to sell the worthless dirt plot and his running commentary in heavy Scottish dialect on his family's native land proves an extraordinary (and epiphanous) reading experience: "Nuthin wis certain here, Nuthin. Mibbee you were alive, mibbee you were dead. Mibbee there was a God, mibbee there were ten thousand. Everyone had a different version of everything, and nothin wis written doon." Trying to picture this man – looking as Pakistani as the natives around him, but speaking in such a strange tongue – is a disturbing, incongruous experience that jars the reader into a recognition of the cultural crossroad at which the narrator finds himself.}} was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book Prize in 2001.

Saadi has written stage and radio plays including The Dark Island, The White Cliffs and Saame Sita. He has edited or co-edited a number of anthologies including Shorts: The Macallan Scotland on Sunday Short Story Collection; A Fictional Guide to Scotland; and Freedom Spring: Ten Years On, a compilation of new writing from South Africa and Scotland. He has appeared widely on television, radio and in public literary readings and is currently working on another novel.

Suhayl Saadi has also written song lyrics for classical and folk-rock musical ensembles, including the Edinburgh-based Dunedin Consort,[http://www.dunedin-consort.org.uk/ Dunedin Consort] and for the Africa-centred World AIDS Day Project Paradisum.{{Cite web|url=http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=30327 |title=(Article about Project Paradisum) |author=Yüksel Söylemez |work=Turkish Daily News |date=11 December 2005 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930181123/http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=30327 |archivedate=30 September 2007}} His work has appeared in translation in anthologies, as in 2006 in German in Cool Britannia (Al Kennedy, ed. Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach).

Among more recent works, Saadi wrote the libretto for Queens of Govan, one of five short operas commissioned in 2007 by the Scottish Opera for its 2008 "Five:15" project.{{Cite web |url=http://www.scottishopera.org.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=209&Itemid=72 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20121224124419/http://www.scottishopera.org.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=209&Itemid=72 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2012-12-24 |title=Five:15 – Operas Made in Scotland |author=Scottish Opera |author-link=Scottish Opera |quote=Queens of Govan: Nigel Osborne, Wajahat Khan and Suhayl Saadi's work for Five:15 features a young Asian girl who is running through the streets of Govan on a rainy Saturday night, late for her job at a kebab shop. As she runs, she is pursued by images and realities from her parallel lives such as the green valleys of Kashmir and the dark waters of the Clyde.}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2039389.0.Five_first_nights_in_an_hour_and_a_quarter.php |title=Five first nights in an hour and a quarter |author=Michael Tumelty |work=The Herald |date=13 February 2008 |quote=The creative teams include some big names in their own fields ... writers, authors and poets Ian Rankin, Bernard MacLaverty, Alexander McCall Smith, Ron Butlin and Suhayl Saadi, paired respectively with composers Craig Armstrong, Gareth Williams, Stephen Deazley, Lyell Cresswell and Nigel Osborne.}}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.scotsman.com/performing-arts/Curtain-up-on--15minute.3829783.jp |title=Curtain up on 15-minute operas as big names aim for the wow factor |author=Tim Cornwell |work=The Scotsman |date=29 February 2008}}{{Cite web|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article3471115.ece |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110517084642/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article3471115.ece |url-status=dead |archive-date=17 May 2011 |title=Five:15 at Oran Mor, Glasgow |author=Richard Morrison |work=The Times |date=3 March 2008}}

Saadi is a board member and co-director of the arts production company Heer Productions Limited, which established the Pakistani Film, Media and Arts Festival[http://www.pakistanifilmfest.com Pakistani Film, Media, and Arts Festival] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060402214220/http://pakistanifilmfest.com/ |date=2 April 2006 }} in the United Kingdom in 2005.

During the month of October 2008, Saadi was the British Council Writer-in-Residence at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.{{Cite web|url=http://www.britishcouncil.org/usa-arts-literature-uk-writer-in-residence-suhayl-saadi.htm |title=UK Writer-in-Residence George Washington University October 1–29, 2008 |author=British Council |author-link=British Council |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20081024072425/http://www.britishcouncil.org/usa-arts-literature-uk-writer-in-residence-suhayl-saadi.htm |archivedate=24 October 2008}} ([http://www.gwu.edu/~media/pressrelease.cfm?event_id=14520 GWU Press release])

A novel, Joseph's Box, inspired by the Biblical/Quranic account of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, was published by Two Ravens Press in August 2009 and was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2011. The novel is set in Scotland, England, Sicily and Pakistan.

;Books

• 2009: Joseph's Box. Ullapool: Two Ravens Press. Paperback: {{ISBN|978-1-906120-44-3}}.
• 2004: Psychoraag. Edinburgh: Black & White Publishing. Hardcover: {{ISBN|1-84502-010-3}}. Paperback: {{ISBN|1-84502-062-6}}.
• 2004: The White Cliffs. Dingwall: Sandstone Press. {{ISBN|0-9546333-1-8}}.
• 2001: The Burning Mirror. Edinburgh: Polygon Books. Paperback: {{ISBN|0-7486-6293-6}}, {{ISBN|978-0-7486-6293-7}}.
• 1997: The Snake. (Under the pen name Melanie Desmoulins.) Creation Books. Paperback: {{ISBN|1-871592-82-8}}.

;Plays

• 2006: Garden of the Fourteenth Moon.
• 2005: The White Cliffs. Glasgow.
• 2004: The Dark Island. London, BBC Radio 4.
• 2003: Saame Sita. Edinburgh.

;Librettos

• 2007: Queens of Govan, libretto, Scottish Opera Five:15 project.{{Cite web|url= http://www.musicalcriticism.com/opera/sco-five-0308.shtml |title= Scottish Opera – Five:15 |author= Mary Robb |work= MusicalCriticism.com: classical music and opera reviews by musicians and musicologists |date=March 2008 }}

;Anthologies

• 2005: Freedom Spring: Ten Years On. Editors: Suhayl Saadi, Catherine McInerney. New Lanark: Waverley Books. Paperback: {{ISBN|1-902407-33-4}}, {{ISBN|978-1-902407-33-3}}.
• 2003: A Fictional Guide to Scotland. Editors: Meaghan Delahunt, Suhayl Saadi, Elizabeth Reeder. Glasgow: OpenInk. Paperback: {{ISBN|0-9545560-0-3}}, {{ISBN|978-0-9545560-0-6}}.
• 2003: Shorts: The Macallan Scotland on Sunday Short Story Collection. Editor: Suhayl Saadi. Edinburgh: Polygon Books. Paperback: {{ISBN|0-7486-6329-0}}, {{ISBN|978-0-7486-6329-3}}.

Saadi was also a contributor to Pax Edina: The One O' Clock Gun Anthology (Edinburgh, 2010){{cite web|url=http://www.leamingtonbooks.co.uk/oocg |title=OOCG |accessdate=2014-05-21 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729020420/http://www.leamingtonbooks.co.uk/oocg |archivedate=29 July 2013 }}

;Novellas

• 2006: The Saelig Tales. In Magic Afoot, the first print edition of Textualities magazine.{{Cite web |url= http://www.textualities.net/editorial/magic.php |title= Magic Afoot: the first print issue of Textualities magazine |work= Textualities, April 2006 |url-status=dead |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20070721200852/http://www.textualities.net/editorial/magic.php |archivedate= 21 July 2007 }} {{ISBN|0-9552896-0-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-9552896-0-6}}.
• 2005: The Aerodrome. Dingwall: Sandstone Press. Published online {{ISBN|1-905207-04-2}}.
• 2006: The White Cliffs. Dingwall: Sandstone Press. Paperback {{ISBN|0-9546333-1-8}}, {{ISBN|978-0-9546333-1-8}}.
• 2008: The Spanish House. Published online{{Cite web |url= http://communities.canada.com/MONTREALGAZETTE/blogs/stageandpage/archive/2008/05/09/blue-met-flashback-2007-dr-saadi-in-glasgow-offers-free-novella.aspx |title= Blue Met Flashback 2007: Dr. Saadi in Glasgow offers free novella |author= Pat Donnelly |work= Montreal Gazette |date= 9 May 2008 |url-status=dead |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20080515184923/http://communities.canada.com/MONTREALGAZETTE/blogs/stageandpage/archive/2008/05/09/blue-met-flashback-2007-dr-saadi-in-glasgow-offers-free-novella.aspx |archivedate= 15 May 2008 }} by the University of Glasgow Association for Scottish Literary Studies in its biannual ezine The Bottle Imp.{{Cite web |url= http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/SWE/TBI/ |title= The Bottle Imp |author= Association for Scottish Literary Studies |author-link= Association for Scottish Literary Studies |access-date= 1 June 2008 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080604040231/http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/SWE/TBI/ |archive-date= 4 June 2008 |url-status=dead }}

{{Reflist}}

→ Note on web searches: Saadi will occasionally be found misspelled as Saadhi.

• [http://sarmed.netfirms.com/suhayl/ Suhayl Saadi website]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20100706015148/http://www.josephsbox.co.uk/ Joseph's Box website]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070216153707/http://www.laurahird.com/showcase/suhayl.html Suhayl Saadi] on Laura Hird's website.
• [http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/scots.shtml Scots Today] by John Corbett for BBC [http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/ Voices.]
• [http://devolvingdiasporas.com/writing.htm Suhayl Saadi] on the Devolving Diasporas project sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Newcastle University, and the University of Stirling.
• {{Cite web |url= http://83.137.212.42/siteArchive/catalystmagazine/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew0lb.RefLocID-0hg01b001006009.Lang-EN.htm |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090126164457/http://83.137.212.42/siteArchive/catalystmagazine/Default.aspx.LocID-0hgnew0lb.RefLocID-0hg01b001006009.Lang-EN.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date= 2009-01-26 |title= A state of flux (interview with Suhayl Saadi) |author= Olivia Skinner |work= Catalyst Magazine }} 5 October 2006.

Reviews and interviews relating to the novel, Joseph's Box can be located at the following sites:

• [http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/a-new-literary-form-is-born-an-interview-with-suhayl-saadi/ 3am magazine]
• [http://kitaabonline.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/suhayl-saadi-uncensored/ kitaabonline magazine]
• [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/booker-back-in-mainstream-thanks-to-bigname-writers-1764013.html/ The Independent newspaper]
• [http://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/19858-suhayl-saadi/ The List magazine]
• [http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/viewpreview.aspx?id=440/ Edinburgh Festivals]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110609055414/http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/books/Book-review-Joseph39s-Box.5472937.jp Scotland on Sunday]
• [http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/book-features/boxing-clever-1.821347/ The Herald newspaper]
• [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/josephs-box-by-suhayl-saadi-1784898.html/ The Independent newspaper]
• [http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/my-favourite-books-of-the-autumn-a-selection-of-mini-reviews-part-2/ Vulpes Libris magazine]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120302044201/http://www.glasgowreview.co.uk/reviews/josephsbox.htm The Glasgow Review]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20100314082314/http://www.cargopublishing.com/podcasts/cargo-podcast/ Cargo Publishing podcast interview]
• [http://ssa.nls.uk/film.cfm?fid=7899/ Feature documentary about Saadi]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saadi, Suhayl}}

Category:1961 births

Category:Living people

Category:Scottish writers

Category:People associated with Glasgow

Category:Scottish people of Pakistani descent

Category:People from Beverley

Category:21st-century Scottish dramatists and playwrights

Category:Scottish opera librettists

Category:British writers of Pakistani descent

Category:PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners

Category:Writers from the East Riding of Yorkshire