Pakistani Author Wins International Literary Prize

A novel hailed as finding “shimmering love” among the bigotries and injustices of the Asian area of an English town yesterday won a share of a £16,000 international literary prize. Maps for Lost Lovers, which took Nadeem Aslam 11 years to write, was declared in San Francisco as joint winner of the annual Kiriyama award, which aims to raise understanding of the peoples of the Pacific rim and south Asian diaspora. He has said that he lived on prize money and grants while writing Maps for Lost Lovers in borrowed flats in Hudders field, Edinburgh, Leicester and Reading. It got him longlisted for last year’s Booker prize – and for the Literary Review’s bad sex award. He currently lives in north London.