Mirza Waheed

Mirza Waheed Novelist who was born and raised in Kashmir but now lives in London. Mirza has written for the BBC, The Guardian, Granta, Guernica (magazine), Al Jazeera English and The New York Times. His first novel, The Collaborator, was published in 2011 and was a finalist for the Guardian First Book award. It takes place in his homeland of Kashmir, torn in conflict between India and Pakistan. Novelist Kamila Shamsie reviewed it for The Guardian and called it "gripping in its narrative drama...Waheed gives us a portrait of Kashmir itself. Away from the rhetorical posturing of India and Pakistan, he reveals, with great sensitivity and an anger that arises from compassion, what it is to live in a part of the world that is regarded by the national government as the enemy within, and by the government next door as a strategic puppet