Mohammed Hanif was born in 1965 in Okara, Pakistan. He studied Avionics and Navigation at Pakistan Air Force College Sargodha and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. After leaving the Pakistan Air Force Academy to pursue a career in journalism, he worked for Newsline and The Washington Post, and in 1996 moved to London to work for the BBC. He has written plays for the stage and the screen, including a critically acclaimed BBC drama and “What Now, Now that We Are Dead?” After 12 years in England, in 2008 he returned with his family to live in Karachi, Pakistan. Hanif’s first book, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was published in 2008. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award and won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Regional Prize for best first book. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was described by The New York Times as a “deft, evil little novel of comic genius.” His latest novel Red Birds was published last year and a German translation will be out in March.