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© Hartwig Klappert
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Aamer Hussein
Pakistan/UK
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Aamer Hussein was born in
Karachi, the former capital of Pakistan, in 1955. He received his
education in the language of the country's former colonial rulers and
from the age of twelve lived in different parts of India. In 1970 he
moved to England with his mother and sister to join his father. Hussein
abandoned his university studies in favour of sojourns in Italy and
Spain, later completing a traineeship at a bank. At the age of
twenty-five he graduated from the School of Oriental and African
Studies at the University of London with a degree in Urdu, Persian and
History.
Following a brief spell working for a film producer,
Hussein has taught English Literature, Urdu and Creative Writing at
various universities as well as publishing as an author since 1985. He
has written numerous reviews for newspapers such as »The Independent«
and the »Times Literary Supplement« and is on the editorial board of
the multicultural literary magazine »Wasafiri«. Aside from these
activities he has also worked as translator who, alongside Urdu
classics, has discovered female authors in particular. In 2000 he
edited the volume »Hoops of Fire: Fifty Years of Fiction by Pakistani
Women« and five years later »Kahani: Short Stories by Pakistani Women«.
He is currently translating a novel by the early twentieth-century
writer Tyaba Bilgrami.
After the publication of his first short
stories in various journals, Hussein's first collection, »A Mirror to
the Sun«, came out in 1993. Since then he has written two more volumes
of stories – »This Other Salt« (1999) and »Turquoise« (2002) –, which
all revolve around the themes of loss, estrangement and longing. The
partitioning of his Indian homeland, the magical Karachi, the
sensuality of the East, and exile in a dull new country are further
themes in his work. Hussein's plots unfold through crystallised,
unpretentious sentences and shifting threads of development, creating a
magical atmosphere – via a complex structure fashioned from flashbacks,
surprising turns, interspersed dreams and myths – through which a
breeze of melancholy floats. »Living in this harsh, aggressive city
where friendship is my only refuge and travelling from one urban
destination to another is a fine ... art, maybe the struggle within me
of my northern present and the sub-tropical colours of my childhood
creates the narrative tensions of my life, and contrast is the
troublesome spine of my fictions.«
Hussein has been a Royal Literary
Writing Fellow at Imperial College in London and a fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature since 2004. His new collection of stories,
»Insomnia«, will be published in 2007. The author lives in London.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Mirror to the Sun
Mantra
London, 1993
Hoops of Fire [ed.]
Saqi Books
London, 1999
The Blue Direction and Other Stories
Penguin
India New Delhi, 1999
Cactus Town and Other Stories
OUP
Karachi, 2002
Turquoise
Saqi Books
London, 2002
This Other Salt
Saqi Books
London, 2005
Kahani [ed.]
Saqi Books
London, 2005 |
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