Pakistani novelist Nadeem Aslam wins Yale Literary prize

Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam has won the Yale University’s prestigious Windham Campbell Literature Prize 2014 for his fiction works, which “explore historical and political trauma with lyricism and profound compassion”.

Aslam is among eight winners in the three categories – fiction, non-fiction, and drama — who will receive $150,000 each in recognition of their achievements and to support their ongoing work.

The writers didn’t know before winning the prize that they were nominees of the prize, and “their responses to winning the prizes ranged from shock to gratitude,” the university said on its website.

Nadeem Aslam, who was born in Gujranwala in 1966, moved to Britain as a teen when his father went into exile during the Ziaul Haq regime, and responded lyrically to the award announcement.

“Artists are moths, chewing holes in the robes of the powerful and the unjust. My work is a private response to the world I live in, so when readers agree with what I have written I am deeply grateful because it makes me feel less alone.”

Aslam is the author of four highly-regarded works of fiction: The Season of the Rainbirds, Maps for Lost Lovers, The Wasted Vigil, and most recently, The Blind Man’s Garden.

“His characters are often deeply religious and conservative, disenchanted with the modern world and suspicious of the West.

Aslam’s great gift is to render the thoughts and actions of those who are most exposed to the dislocations and disruptions of history in ways that bring forth their full humanity. The consequences of the choices his characters make feel as momentous in the world in which the novel takes place as they do in the one in which the reader lives,” said the university on its website.

Announcing the winners, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale said this year’s recipients illustrate the global scale of the prizes, with the eight winning writers hailing from seven countries.