H. M. Naqvi

People Living

إتش إم نقوي

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† Hijri date derived by computation from the Gregorian/Julian date; it may differ from the transmitted date by a day or two.

H. M. Naqvi (born 1973 on the English article's dating) is a Pakistani novelist based in Karachi. Born in London and brought up in Karachi, he graduated from Georgetown University in 1996, worked at the World Bank from 1997 to 2003, and studied creative writing at Boston University under Ha Jin. His debut novel Home Boy (2009), about three young Pakistanis in New York after the September 2001 attacks, won the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2011; his second novel, The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack, appeared in 2019.

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At a glance

Roles
writer
Region
South Asia · al-Andalus & Europe
Identifiers
Wikidata

Life in time

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The Colonial Era · The Contemporary Era · The Modern Era Contemporaries: Abbas-Ali Amid Zanjani · Abbas Kiarostami · Abd al-Aziz al-Ghumari · Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghudda · Abd al-Halim Mahmud

Place in the story

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    Summary

    H. M. Naqvi (born 1973 on the English article's dating) is a Pakistani novelist based in Karachi. Born in London and brought up in Karachi, he graduated from Georgetown University in 1996, worked at the World Bank from 1997 to 2003, and studied creative writing at Boston University under Ha Jin. 1 His debut novel Home Boy (2009), about three young Pakistanis in New York after the September 2001 attacks, won the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2011; his second novel, The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack, appeared in 2019. 1

    Life

    Naqvi was born in London and grew up in Karachi. The English and Urdu articles date his birth to 1973, while Wikidata and the Literary Encyclopedia give 1974 — the record carries the year as debated. 1 2 3 The Literary Encyclopedia expands his name as Husain M. Naqvi and describes a diplomatic family that lived in several countries. 3 He graduated from Georgetown University in 1996 with degrees in economics and English literature, and while in Washington he ran a slam poetry venue, the Fifteen Minutes Club. 1 In 1997 he joined the World Bank and spent the following years in financial services on the American East Coast and in Karachi; after leaving that career in 2003 he attended classes at Harvard and then joined the creative writing programme at Boston University, working under Ha Jin, and taught writing there. 1 He moved to Karachi in 2007, was a resident at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2010, and has also taught creative writing at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. 1 The sources name no religion for him, and the museum records none. 1 2

    Work

    Home Boy was published in the United States in September 2009 and follows three young Pakistani men in New York in the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks; the New York Times read it as immigrant narrative, bildungsroman and New York novel in one, and Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review. 1 On 22 January 2011 it won the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, worth 50,000 dollars, at the Jaipur Literature Festival. 1 The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack (2019) is narrated by a septuagenarian of a once-prominent Karachi family, and Kirkus Reviews found its strength in its evocation of the city's neighbourhoods, history and culture, while the Wall Street Journal called it a delirious love letter to Karachi. 1 Naqvi has also written on contemporary Pakistani art, minorities and Balochistan for GlobalPost, and on Karachi for Forbes. 1

    Sources

    • The source entities cited above, registered under data/source/.

    Sources

    1. H. M. Naqvi — English Wikipedia
    2. H. M. Naqvi — Wikidata
    3. H.M. Naqvi (The Literary Encyclopedia)
    • H. M. Naqvi — Urdu Wikipedia
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “H. M. Naqvi”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/hm-naqvi/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-11-06.

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