Zia Haider Rahman
| Zia Haider Rahman | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | Sylhet Division, Bangladesh |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Website | |
| ziahaiderrahman.com | |
Zia Haider Rahman (Bengali: জিয়া হায়দার রহমান, /ziːə haɪdər rɑːmən/) is a novelist who was born in Bangladesh and raised in the UK. His debut novel, In the Light of What We Know, was published in 2014 to international critical acclaim.[1] In August 2015, Rahman was awarded the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain’s oldest literary prize.[2]
Background
Rahman was born in rural Bangladesh in the region of Sylhet and has said that his mother tongue was Sylheti and not Bengali, although he understands some Bengali.[3] His family moved to the UK, when Rahman was small, where they were squatters in a derelict building before being moved to a council estate. His father was a bus conductor and waiter and his mother a seamstress. Rahman attended a comprehensive school. In an interview with Guernica, he remarked that he "grew up in poverty, in some of the worst conditions in a developed economy.[4] Rahman took a first class honours degree from Balliol College, Oxford, with further studies at the Maximilianeum and Munich, Cambridge and Yale universities. He worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in New York before practicing as a corporate lawyer and then as an international human rights lawyer focusing on corruption.[5] He has also worked as an anti-corruption activist for Transparency International.[6]
Work
Rahman's first novel In the Light of What We Know received plaudits internationally, earning high praise from literary critics such as James Wood, Louise Adler, Amitava Kumar, Joyce Carol Oates, and Wendy Lesser. Rahman has stated that most of the book was written in upstate New York at Yaddo.[7]
Others
Zia Haider Rahman was invited by the Kolkata Book Fair in January 2015 to deliver the Ashok Kumar Sarkar Memorial Lecture 2015. He talked about freedom of expression.[8]
He was writer in residence at University of Amsterdam, Netherlands during Feb-Mar 2016.[9]
This year Rahman joins Maureen Freely and Antonia Fraser, Vicky Featherstone and Peter Stothard as a judge of the 2016 PEN Pinter Prize which was established in 2009 by English PEN in memory of Nobel Laureate playwright and poet Harold Pinter.[10]
References
- ↑ Critical reception of In the Light of What We Know
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- ↑ WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show 1 May 2014
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- ↑ [1] 12 January 2014 The Guardian.
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- ↑ "On Freedom of Expression and a Writer's Predicament" 29 January 2015
- ↑ "Zia Haider Rahman benoemd tot writer in residence" 10 February 2016
- ↑ "PEN Pinter Prize extends reach beyond UK" 17 February 2016
External links
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Wikiquote has quotations related to: Zia Haider Rahman |
- Author's website
- (Audio) ABC RN 'Books & Art', 3 June 2015
- Wood, James. "The World As We Know It: Zia Haider Rahman's Dazzling Début" 19 May 2014, The New Yorker
- Use dmy dates from November 2013
- Use British English from November 2013
- Articles containing Bengali-language text
- Living people
- Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
- 21st-century British novelists
- British novelists
- British people of Bangladeshi descent
- British male writers
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients
- Male novelists
