Mohammed Hanif

Mohammed Hanif (born 1964) is a British-Pakistani writer and journalist, born in Okara, Punjab. He trained as a Pakistan Air Force pilot officer before turning to journalism, worked for Newsline and headed the BBC's Urdu service in London, then returned to Pakistan in 2008. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008), a satire of the Zia-ul-Haq era, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book; Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011) and Red Birds (2018) followed, and he writes a monthly opinion column for The New York Times. ¹

Hanif was born in Okara, Punjab, in November 1964; Wikidata's authority-referenced statement gives 1965, and the record carries the date as debated. ^{1 2 3} He graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer but left to pursue journalism, working first for Newsline and writing for the Washington Post and India Today; he is a graduate of the University of East Anglia. ¹ In 1996 he moved to London to work for the BBC and later became head of its Urdu service; he moved back to Pakistan in 2008. ¹ He is married to the actress Nimra Bucha. ¹ In his own writing about Pakistan's religious politics he recalls taking Quran lessons as a boy of about nine and writes of "we mainstream Muslims"; the museum records no school or order for him. ⁴

A Case of Exploding Mangoes (2008), his first novel, is a black comedy about the death of General Zia-ul-Haq; it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. ¹ Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (2011), about a Christian nurse in a Karachi hospital, was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; Red Birds appeared in 2018. ¹ He has also written the feature film The Long Night (2002), the radio play What Now, Now That We Are Dead? and the stage play The Dictator's Wife (2008), and his journalism appears in The New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, The New Yorker and The Washington Post. ¹ He received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 2018 and returned the award in December 2023 in protest at the treatment of Baloch protesters in Islamabad. ¹

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