Zia Haider Rahman
Zia Haider Rahman | |
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Harvard University, Radcliffe Fellowship New America, Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellowship Dartmouth College, Montgomery Fellowship Southern New Hampshire University, Honorary Doctorate | |
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Zia Haider Rahman (/ˈziːə ˈhaɪdər ˈrɑːmən/) (ⓘ) is a British novelist and broadcaster. His novel In the Light of What We Know was published in 2014 to international critical acclaim and translated into many languages.[1] He was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain’s oldest literary prize, previous winners of which include Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy.[2]
Biography
Rahman was born in
Rahman was a college scholar at
Work
In the Light of What We Know, a novel, received plaudits internationally, earning high praise from literary critics such as James Wood,[9] Joyce Carol Oates,[10] Louise Adler,[11] and Amitava Kumar.[12] The novel appeared in numerous end of year "Best of" lists. According to Rahman, most of the book was written at Yaddo in upstate New York.[13]
Rahman's writing has appeared in The New York Times,[14] The Guardian, The New York Review of Books[15] and elsewhere. He is a contributor to A Point of View, a long-running weekly radio show broadcast on BBC Radio 4 to an audience of over a million.[16][17] He is also a documentary maker.[18][19]
Rahman is a critic of liberal elites.[20] From an interview with Rahman in The New York Review of Books:[21]
"There are so few class migrants into the liberal elites. When I was on the road at literary festivals promoting my novel, more than once I was told I really ought to meet [novelists] Mohsin Hamid or Kamila Shamsie. I’m not naive: liberal elites see race before class and are blind to the gulf between my background and the highly privileged one of the likes of Hamid, who attended Aitchison College, Pakistan’s Eton.”
He is now working on a nonfiction book proposal, a memoir, that would explore this theme—of a liberal who has issues with liberals.
Rahman led a project at Harvard University using machine learning, network science, and publicly available data to map the world's elites and their political, business and social inter-relationships, with the mission of raising transparency in the public space.[22]
Honours
In August 2015, Rahman was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain’s oldest literary prize, previous winners of which include E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, J. M. Coetzee and Iris Murdoch.[2]
Fellowships Rahman received include the Walter Jackson Bate Fellowship at the
Rahman delivered many public lectures, including a Montgomery Fellowship Lecture 2020, Dartmouth College; the 2018 Reckford Lecture in European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (previously delivered by
During 2016, he was writer in residence at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands,[29] and was awarded the inaugural International Ranald MacDonald Award.[30]
In 2017 Rahman received an honorary doctorate from Southern New Hampshire University, where he subsequently spent a year as a visiting professor.[31]
Rahman sat on several judging panels for international and American prizes and fellowships. In 2018, he was appointed a judge of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.[32] He joined Maureen Freely, Antonia Fraser, Vicky Featherstone and Peter Stothard as a judge of the 2016 PEN Pinter Prize, established in 2009 in memory of Nobel Laureate playwright and poet Harold Pinter,[33] which the panel awarded to Margaret Atwood.[34] In connection with the PEN Pinter Prize, Rahman authored a widely cited op-ed, published by The New York Times, exploring how British authors of color are identified by British literary elites.[14]
References
- ^ Official website
- ^ a b Alison Flood (17 August 2015). "James Tait Black prize goes to Zia Haider Rahman's debut novel". The Guardian.
- ^ British Council official website
- ^ Jonathan Lee (23 October 2014). "How Do You Know?". Guernica.
- ^ Balliol College, Oxford, official website
- ^ S. S. Haque (27 October 2014). "The Completeness of Novel-Writing and Inquiries into Epistemology". The Oxonian Review. Archived from the original on 31 October 2014.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Kate Kellaway (12 January 2014). "Debut authors of 2014". The Guardian.
- ^ Puja Bhattacharjee (14 April 2015). "In conversation with novelist Zia Haider Rahman". Governance Now.
- ^ James Wood (19 May 2014). "The World As We Know It: Zia Haider Rahman's dazzling début". The New Yorker.
- ^ Joyce Carol Oates (23 October 2014). "Witness to the Unknowable". The New York Review of Books.
- ^ Louise Adler (5 September 2014). "Book review". The Sydney Morning Herald.
- ^ Amitava Kumar (13 April 2014). "The Banker, the Visitor, His Wife and Her Lover". The New York Times.
- ^ Pepper Smith (3 September 2014). "Spotlight on Yaddo Artist Colony". National Endowment for the Arts.
- ^ a b Zia Haider Rahman (8 April 2016). "Oh, So Now I'm Bangladeshi?". The New York Times.
- ^ "Zia Haider Rahman". New York Review of Books.
- ^ Zia Haider Rahman (1 December 2017). A Point of View: A Folder Called 'Hope'. BBC Radio 4.
- ^ Zia Haider Rahman (24 April 2020). A Point of View: A Few Good Trade Offs. BBC Radio 4.
- ^ Zia Haider Rahman (29 November 2017). A Picture Held Us Captive. BBC Radio 4.
- ^ Miranda Sawyer (3 December 2017). "The week in radio and podcasts: Blue Planet II: The Podcast; In Search of the Invisible Army; A Picture Held Us Captive". The Guardian.
- ^ Hannah Silverstein (12 February 2020). "Zia Haider Rahman 'Reckons with the Elites'". The Dartmouth.
- ^ Matt Seaton. "Interview with Zia Haider Rahman". The New York Review of Books.
- ^ Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, official website
- ^ Harvard University official website
- ^ Dartmouth College official website
- ^ New America official website
- ^ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill official website
- ^ Abir Ahmed (7 January 2015). "International Kolkata Book Fair announces focal country". India Today.
- ^ Alison Flood (16 September 2014). "VS Naipaul dropped by Bali literary festival over fee request". The Guardian.
- ^ University of Amsterdam official website
- ^ "Hollands Dieps congratulates Zia Haider Rahman" 18 September 2016
- ^ Lola Duffort (4 May 2017). "Commencement speakers announced for N.H. colleges". Concorde Monitor.
- ^ Robert Con Davis-Undiano (2 August 2017). "Jurors announced for the 2018 Neustadt Prize".
- ^ Natasha Onwuemezi (17 February 2016). "PEN Pinter Prize extends reach beyond UK". The Bookseller.
- ^ Alison Flood (16 June 2016). "Margaret Atwood wins 2016 PEN Pinter prize". The Guardian.