Mohsin Hamid Biography

Mohsin Hamid was born on July 23, 1971, in Lahore, Pakistan. He spent his childhood in both Pakistan and California. He then attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Hamid worked in London and New York City for several years before returning to Pakistan to raise his children and write full time.

Moth Smoke, Hamid’s first novel, was published in 2000. It was made into a telefilm in Pakistan and an operetta in Italy. His second novel, the international bestseller The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007), was made into a film in 2012; Hamid cowrote the first draft of the screenplay. His groundbreaking novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was released in 2013. A collection of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations, was published in in 2015, and Exit West was published in 2017.

Hamid’s works have been translated into 40 languages and have won numerous awards. Moth Smoke won a 2001 Betty Trask Award, given by England’s Society of Authors to new novelists under the age of 35, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel in 2001. Hamid has been shortlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize, England’s foremost literary award, for The Reluctant Fundamentalist in 2007 and Exit West in 2017. Exit West received the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a finalist for over a dozen others. His short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Paris Review. Hamid continues to lecture at universities around the world.