A Celebration of Post Colonial Fiction
Join us at T2F for a rare evening of readings and conversation with four Pakistani writers and the judges of the regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize – ahead of the shortlist announcement on February 18 2010
Sunday, 14th February 2010 | 6:00 pm
Mohammed Hanif, author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes, will introduce the authors after which H.M. Naqvi, Kamila Shamsie, Musharraf Ali Farooqi, and Nafisa Rizvi will read from their works. The readings will be followed by a discussion led by the regional judges of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010; Muneeza Shamsie (Regional Chairperson), Dr. Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, and Dr. Stephanos Stephanides.
Dr. Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick University, UK. He was born in Kolkata, India, and has worked, studied and taught in India and England. He is the author of ‘Crime and Empire’ (OUP, 2003) and ‘Postcolonial Environments’ (Palgrave, 2010), and a wide range of scholarly articles and edited collections.
Dr. Stephanos Stephanides is an academic, poet, critic, translator and documentary film maker. He was born in Cyprus but since he was a child, he has lived in several countries. He returned to his native island in 1992 where he is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cyprus. He is on the editorial board of a number of academic publications and is the author of several books.
Muneeza Shamsie is a Pakistani writer, critic, bibliographer and editor of ‘And the World Changed – Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women’. The Feminist Press edition in the USA won the Foreword Bronze Award and the IPPY Gold Award for the best anthology by an independent publisher. She contributes regularly to the Pakistani press and international scholarly publications.
H.M. Naqvi has worked in finance and taught creative writing at Boston University. His debut novel, ‘Home Boy’, has been published by HarperCollins. Presently he resides in Karachi.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of 5 novels, most recently ‘Burnt Shadows’ which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and is being translated into 21 languages. She was born and grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London.
Mohammed Hanif’s first novel ‘A Case of Exploding Mangoes’ won the Commonwealth Prize for first novel, the inaugural Shalkti Bhatt prize and the Corine Award in Germany. It was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker. Hanif works for the BBC and is working on his second novel.
Musharraf Ali Farooqi is the author of ‘The Story of a Widow’ which was longlisted for the 2010 IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award. He has translated the Urdu classics ‘The Adventures of Amir Hamza’, ‘Hoshruba: The Land and the Tilism’, and the forthcoming poetry collection of Afzal Ahmed Syed. He is currently the Urdu Publisher at Oxford University Press.
Nafisa Rizvi started her career in advertising. It took her over a decade and a diploma in advertising to figure out that she was in the wrong profession. She then took to teaching and is presently assisting A level students with art theory courses. Nafisa recently published her first novel, ‘The Blue Room’.
This event is sponsored by Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2010 which is organized by the Commonwealth Foundation with the support of the Macquarie Group Foundation.
Date: Sunday, 14th February, 2010
Time: 6:00 pm
Venue: PeaceNiche | T2F
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Seats are limited and will be available on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. No reservations.
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