Mohammed Hanif

Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. He graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Prize. He has written the libretto for an opera called Bhutto, commissioned by the Lyric Theater in Illinois, which premiered with the Pittsburgh Opera in 2019. He has also written for the stage and screen, including a BBC radio play, What Now, Now That We Are Dead? He writes regularly for the New York Times, BBC Urdu, and BBC Punjabi, and currently splits his time between Berlin and Karachi.