Novelist. Nadeem had his first short story published in Urdu in a Pakistani newspaper when he was only 13. His debut novel, Seasons of the Rainbirds (1993), set in rural Pakistan, won the Betty Trask and the Author's Club Best First Novel awards, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel award. Nadeem Aslam's second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers, is a delightful tale on a large Pakistani migrants living in Britain. His third novel The Wasted Vigil (2008) is realities arisen in the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan and have ranged from the gruesome extremism to the sinister actions of American forces in Afghanistan since 9/11. His latest novel, The Blind Man's Garden (2013) is set in months immediately following 9/11, and centres on Pakistani school once run by 60-year old Rohan, the titular blind widower. The school has now become a kind of selection academy for young men picked to go and train in Jihadi camps that are linked to the Pakistani secret service. Nadeem Aslam was born in Gujranwala in Pakistan. He came to Britain at the age of 14 when his father, a Communist, fled President Zia's regime and settled the family in Huddersfield. Nadeem now lives in north London.