Daniyal Mueenuddin

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Daniyal Mueenuddin
دانیال معین الدین
Pakistani-American
EducationDartmouth College (BA)
Yale University (JD)
University of Arizona (MFA)
OccupationAuthor
Known forCritically short story
WebsiteDaniyal Mueenuddin's Official Website

Daniyal Mueenuddin (

Commonwealth Writers' Prize and other honors and critical acclaim.[5]

Born in Los Angeles, USA, he spent his childhood in Pakistan. At the age of thirteen he moved back to the US, where he received higher education and worked as a journalist, a director, a lawyer, a businessman, before finally devoting his efforts to writing.

Life and works

Early life

Mueenuddin was born in

Establishment Division, which administered the civil service (later he was the country's Chief Election Commissioner).[7] In the late 1950s, Mueenuddin's father was posted for several years to Washington as chief negotiator of the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) between India and Pakistan[8] where he met his future American wife Barbara,[7] a reporter at The Washington Post.[4] After a courtship and marriage they moved to Pakistan in 1960, living first in Rawalpindi and later in Lahore.[4][9] Keeping with an agreement she had made with her father, a surgeon in Los Angeles who had heard of unsanitary conditions in Pakistani hospitals, his expectant mother flew back to the U.S. and Mueenuddin was born in Los Angeles in April.[10] Two months later mother and child returned to Rawalpindi, Pakistan, then the country's temporary capital. Several years later, the family moved to Lahore, where Mueenuddin attended the Lahore American School.[3][9] Mueenuddin remembers his youth there as a "magical" time which included hunting and riding.[4] Mueenuddin and his brother Tamur[11] often visited the US in the summers.[4]

At age 13 his parents separated and the two boys moved with their mother back to the US, where Mueenuddin spent five years at prep-school,

PEN American Center and died in October 2009.)[13] In 1990 his father died, leaving Mueenuddin more exposed but also more independent. He ran the farm as a business, and not in the traditional feudal way like many of his neighbors, by "hiring good managers, paying them well, and demanding a lot of them."[4][6] Mueenuddin would also later inherit his mother's family farm in Wisconsin.[6]

Family

Mueenuddin is married to Cecilie Brenden Mueenuddin, a Norwegian anthropologist whom he met while on a

Oslo, Norway.[14] He was previously married to the New York artist and lawyer Rachel Jeanne Harris in 1999.[7] Mueenuddin is the godson of Katherine Anne Porter, who was a friend of his mother.[15] Porter died in 1980 and his mother became one of the trustees of the Porter literary estate.[16]

Career

In 1993, with the farm running fairly smoothly, he decided to spend time in the West again

Yale Journal of International Law and as Director of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. After graduation he worked briefly at Human Rights Watch and then as a corporate lawyer at the New York firm Debevoise & Plimpton between 1998 and 2001.[7][9]
However he found the life unsatisfying and decided to begin a new career in writing, explaining that:

Sitting in my office on the forty-second floor of a black skyscraper in Manhattan, looking out over the East river, I gradually developed confidence in the stories I had lived through during those years on the farm. I realized that I was in a unique position to write these stories for a Western audience – stories about the farm and the old feudal ways, the dissolving feudal order and the new way coming, the sleek businessmen from the cities. I resigned from the law firm, returned to Pakistan, and began writing the stories that make up In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.[9]

He enrolled in the

Anton Chekov, "I like the Russians, like everyone else. I am constantly reading Chekov. I am never not reading Chekov."[5]

Awards

Mueenuddin was the winner of the 2010

The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year
.

One of his short stories, "Nawabdin Electrician", was selected by

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.[20]
Mueenuddin's first published story, "Our Lady of Paris," which appeared in Zoetrope, was a finalist for the 2007 National Magazine Awards in fiction.

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ Sofer, Dalia (2009-02-06). "Sex and Other Social Devices". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  2. ^ Dirda, Michael (2009-02-15). "Michael Dirda on 'In Other Rooms, Other Wonders". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Trachtenberg, Jeffrey A. (2009-01-31). "Tales From a Punjab Mango Farm". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Ashbrook, Tom; Mueenuddin, Daniyal (2009-02-20). "Writing the Unknown Pakistan (interview)". On Point. WBUR-FM. Archived from the original on 2011-05-30. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  5. ^ a b Jahangir, Javed (2010-02-23). "Interview With Daniyal Mueenuddin". Beyond The Margins. Archived from the original on 2010-05-20. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  6. ^ a b c d Møst, Morten (August 13, 2012). "Sharing roots from a rural farm". Dagens Næringsliv (The Norwegian Business Daily). Retrieved March 1, 2014.
  7. ^ a b c d e "WEDDINGS; Ms. Harris, Mr. Mueenuddin". The New York Times. 1999-06-13. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  8. ^ "India and Pakistan". The Atlantic. November 1960. Retrieved October 5, 2016.
  9. ^ a b c d e Mueenuddin, Daniyal. "An interview with Daniyal Mueenuddin". Book Browse.com. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  10. ^ Yabroff, Jennie (July 8, 2009). "No Direction Home". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 2011-11-15. Retrieved September 25, 2012.
  11. ^ "Obituaries: Edward Davis". The East Hampton Star. September 10, 2009. Archived from the original on January 2, 2010. Mr. Davis was a stepfather to Tamur and Daniyal Mueenuddin..
  12. ^ "Daniyal Mueenuddin Takes Home Story Prize". Poets & Writers Magazine. 2010-04-03. Retrieved 2012-07-16.
  13. ^ "Paid Notice: Deaths DAVIS, BARBARA THOMPSON". The New York Times. October 25, 2009. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
  14. ^ a b c Mueenuddin, Daniyal (April 24, 2009). "Interview". The Elegant Variation. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
  15. ^ Unrue, Darlene Harbour (May 13, 2010). Katherine Anne Porter Remembered. University of Alabama Press. p. 162.
  16. ^ "Desmond Willson Papers". University of Maryland Archives. Retrieved November 10, 2023.
  17. ^ Mueenuddin, Daniyal (Fall 2006). "Our Lady of Paris". Zoetrope: All-Story. 10 (3). Archived from the original on August 16, 2015. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
  18. ^ Works by Daniyal Mueenuddin, at The New Yorker
  19. ^ Pauli, Michelle (20 May 2010). "Ondaatje prize shortlist wanders from Pakistan to Hackney". The Guardian. Retrieved November 8, 2018.
  20. ^ PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010, TOC.

External links

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