A Pakistan-born star on the British literary horizon

There is a new star on the literary horizon in Britain: Gujranwala-born Nadeem Aslam, whose second novel that took more than 10 years to write, has received rave reviews.

The author moved with his family from Pakistan to England, settling in Huddersfield, Yorkshire when he was only 14. His father, he says, was a communist who left Pakistan to escape political oppression. Nadeem now lives in north London. His new book ‘Maps for Lost Lovers’, published by the famous publishing house of Faber and Faber, has as its backdrop an English town called Dasht-e-Tanhaii – a phrase borrowed from the famous poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz – where two lovers called Chanda and Jugnu have…