H. M. Naqvi
Encyclopedia
H.M. Naqvi is a Karachi
-based novelist who is the author of Home Boy, winner of the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
.
, Islamabad
, Algiers
and New York
. The eldest of three brothers, he spoke Urdu
and English at home and began writing at age six. At age six he attended Froebel's elementary school
in Islamabad
. He later also attended P.S. 6
for two years in New York.
After graduating from Georgetown University
(1996) with degrees in economics and English literature, he wrote short stories while subsisting on a "two dollar budget". He also ran the only slam poetry venue in Washington D.C., the Fifteen Minutes Club. He represented Pakistan in the National Poetry Slam
in Ann Arbor, Michigan
in 1995. His poems were broadcast on NPR
and BBC
.
In 1997 he joined the World Bank
and spent the next eight years working in the financial services industry on the East Coast
and in Karachi. When he quit in 2003, he left for Cambridge, Massachusetts
where sat in classes at Harvard
’s English department, pretending to be a student, including James Wood
’s survey of postwar fiction and Elvis Mitchell
’s class on contemporary film.
Subsequently, he attended the creative writing program at Boston University
where he worked with National Book Award
recipient Ha Jin
. While working on his novel, he taught writing at Boston University. He wrote till six in the morning and taught in the afternoons and evenings.
Naqvi moved to Karachi in 2007. He has since worked in his hometown on reportage and his next novel. In 2010, he was a resident participant in the International Writing Program
at the University of Iowa.
Naqvi has written on contemporary Pakistani art, minorities, and Balochistan
for the Global Post
and on Karachi for Forbes
.
division of Random House
to acclaim. The New York Times hailed it as "smart…debut [that] is at once immigrant narrative, bildungsroman
and New York City novel, with a dash of the picaresque…Naqvi is a former slam poet, and his exuberant sentences burst with the rhythms and driving power of that form while steering clear of bombast. "Home Boy" is a remarkably engaging novel that delights as it disturbs.". On his American tour, he returned to slam roots for a performance at the Nuyorican Poets Club. He also read at Harvard University, the Tenement Museum
, the Brooklyn Book Festival
and the Asia Society
.
When Home Boy was published in India in January 2010 by HarperCollins
, it hit the top ten fiction bestseller list. According to the Indian Express
, the novel is "culturally au courant and with an eye for the absurd — a cross between early Jay McInerney
and Gary Shteyngart
, with subcontinental seasoning. It incorporates underground music, fashion and intoxication-producing substances as well as...Faiz Ahmed Faiz
and home-cooked seekh kebab and biryani
." In January 2010 he attended the Jaipur Literature Festival
.
Home Boy has been very well received in Naqvi’s native Pakistan. He has read the The Second Floor [T2F], Khas Gallery, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology [SZABIST] and at the Indus Valley School of Arts
. He was also in discussion with London-based Pakistani artist Faiza Butt at Art Dubai. The German
, Italian
and Portuguese
editions of the book were published in 2010.
Karachi
Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the main financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million...
-based novelist who is the author of Home Boy, winner of the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is a literary prize awarded annually to writers of any ethnicity or nationality writing about South Asia themes such as culture, politics, history, or people. It is for an original full-length novel written in English, or translated into English. The first award...
.
Life
H.M. Naqvi was born in 1974 and spent his childhood between KarachiKarachi
Karachi is the largest city, main seaport and the main financial centre of Pakistan, as well as the capital of the province of Sindh. The city has an estimated population of 13 to 15 million, while the total metropolitan area has a population of over 18 million...
, Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
, Algiers
Algiers
' is the capital and largest city of Algeria. According to the 1998 census, the population of the city proper was 1,519,570 and that of the urban agglomeration was 2,135,630. In 2009, the population was about 3,500,000...
and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. The eldest of three brothers, he spoke Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
and English at home and began writing at age six. At age six he attended Froebel's elementary school
Froebel's International School
Froebel's International School is a school located in Pakistan with branches in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, and Lahore. It was founded in 1975 by Mrs. Zamir. It started with ten students and four faculty members but now has grown to three campuses in three cities...
in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
. He later also attended P.S. 6
P.S. 6
P.S. 6, The Lillie Devereaux Blake school, is a public elementary school located on the Upper East Side in New York City. Founded in 1894, P.S. 6 is regarded as one of the top elementary schools in New York City.-Overview:...
for two years in New York.
After graduating from Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
(1996) with degrees in economics and English literature, he wrote short stories while subsisting on a "two dollar budget". He also ran the only slam poetry venue in Washington D.C., the Fifteen Minutes Club. He represented Pakistan in the National Poetry Slam
National Poetry Slam
The National Poetry Slam is a performance poetry competition where teams from across the United States, Canada, and France participate in a large-scale poetry slam. The event occurs in early August every year and takes place in a different US city....
in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
in 1995. His poems were broadcast on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
and BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
.
In 1997 he joined the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
and spent the next eight years working in the financial services industry on the East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
and in Karachi. When he quit in 2003, he left for Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
where sat in classes at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
’s English department, pretending to be a student, including James Wood
James Wood
James Wood was an officer of the U.S. Continental Army during the American Revolution and the 11th Governor of Virginia.-Personal life:...
’s survey of postwar fiction and Elvis Mitchell
Elvis Mitchell
Elvis Mitchell is an American film critic, host of the public radio show The Treatment, and visiting lecturer at Harvard University. He has served as a film critic for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the LA Weekly, The Detroit Free Press, and The New York Times...
’s class on contemporary film.
Subsequently, he attended the creative writing program at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
where he worked with National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
recipient Ha Jin
Ha Jin
Jīn Xuěfēi is a contemporary Chinese-American writer and novelist using the pen name Ha Jin . Ha comes from his favorite city, Harbin.-Early life:...
. While working on his novel, he taught writing at Boston University. He wrote till six in the morning and taught in the afternoons and evenings.
Naqvi moved to Karachi in 2007. He has since worked in his hometown on reportage and his next novel. In 2010, he was a resident participant in the International Writing Program
International Writing Program
The International Writing Program is a writing residency for international artists in Iowa City, Iowa. Since its inception in 1967, the IWP has hosted over 1,100 emerging and established poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists, and journalists from more than 120 countries...
at the University of Iowa.
Naqvi has written on contemporary Pakistani art, minorities, and Balochistan
Balochistan
Balochistan or Baluchistan is a region which covers parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. It can also refer to one of several modern and historical territories within that region:...
for the Global Post
GlobalPost
GlobalPost is an online US news company that focuses on international news. It wants "to redefine international news for the digital age."-History and management:...
and on Karachi for Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
.
Home Boy
H. M. Naqvi’s debut novel Home Boy was first published in the United States in September 2009 by the Crown BooksCrown Books
Crown Books Corporation was a bookseller headquartered in Lake Arbor, an unincorporated community in Prince George's County, Maryland, near Largo and Upper Marlboro. It was founded in the Washington, D.C., metro area by Robert Haft in 1977...
division of Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
to acclaim. The New York Times hailed it as "smart…debut [that] is at once immigrant narrative, bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
and New York City novel, with a dash of the picaresque…Naqvi is a former slam poet, and his exuberant sentences burst with the rhythms and driving power of that form while steering clear of bombast. "Home Boy" is a remarkably engaging novel that delights as it disturbs.". On his American tour, he returned to slam roots for a performance at the Nuyorican Poets Club. He also read at Harvard University, the Tenement Museum
Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site
The Lower East Side Tenement Museum features a five-story brick tenement building that was home to an estimated 7,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 1935. This building, located at 97 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, is a National Historic Site...
, the Brooklyn Book Festival
Brooklyn Book Festival
The Brooklyn Book Festival is an annual book fair held in Brooklyn, New York. It was begun in 2006 by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who wanted to showcase the "Brooklyn voice" in literature, as numerous authors reside in the borough...
and the Asia Society
Asia Society
The Asia Society is a non-profit organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States and around the world Hong Kong, Manila, Mumbai, Seoul, Shanghai, and Melbourne...
.
When Home Boy was published in India in January 2010 by HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, it hit the top ten fiction bestseller list. According to the Indian Express
The Indian Express
The Indian Express is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. It is published in Mumbai by Indian Express Group. After Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split in 1999 among his family members into two with the southern editions taking the name The New Indian Express, while the old...
, the novel is "culturally au courant and with an eye for the absurd — a cross between early Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney
John Barrett McInerney Jr. is an American writer. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City; Ransom; Story of My Life; Brightness Falls; and The Last of the Savages...
and Gary Shteyngart
Gary Shteyngart
Gary Shteyngart is an American writer born in Leningrad, USSR. Much of his work is satirical and relies on the invention of elaborately fictitious yet somehow familiar places and times.-Life:...
, with subcontinental seasoning. It incorporates underground music, fashion and intoxication-producing substances as well as...Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was a Pakistani intellectual, poet, and one of the most famous poets of the Urdu language. He was a member of the Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin-e-Hind and an avowed Marxist. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union...
and home-cooked seekh kebab and biryani
Biryani
Biryani, biriani, or beriani is a set of rice-based foods made with spices, rice and meat, fish, eggs or vegetables. The name is derived from the Persian word beryā which means "fried" or "roasted"....
." In January 2010 he attended the Jaipur Literature Festival
Jaipur Literature Festival
The Jaipur Literature Festival is an annual literary festival taking place in the pink city of Jaipur since 2006. The Diggi Palace Hotel serves as the main venue of the festival...
.
Home Boy has been very well received in Naqvi’s native Pakistan. He has read the The Second Floor [T2F], Khas Gallery, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology [SZABIST] and at the Indus Valley School of Arts
Indus Valley Institute of Art and Architecture
Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture is a not-for-profit degree awarding institution in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan The college was established in 1989, by a group of architects, designers and artists...
. He was also in discussion with London-based Pakistani artist Faiza Butt at Art Dubai. The German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
editions of the book were published in 2010.
Awards
- James D. Phelan Award for Poetry - American Academy of Poets
- DSC Prize for South Asian LiteratureDSC Prize for South Asian LiteratureDSC Prize for South Asian Literature is a literary prize awarded annually to writers of any ethnicity or nationality writing about South Asia themes such as culture, politics, history, or people. It is for an original full-length novel written in English, or translated into English. The first award...
for Home Boy - Winner (2011)