Mohsin Hamid was born in Lahore, Pakistan. After completing his schooling in Pakistan, Hamid attended Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. It was at Princeton that Hamid took creative writing workshops and developed the draft of his first novel, Moth Smoke.
Hamid was accepted to Harvard Law School, but found he was more interested in writing than practicing law. He completely reinvented his novel, making the story into a trial and submitting it as his law school thesis. It was accepted and he received his JD with honors.
Moth Smoke was published in 2000 and won a Betty Trask Award for best first novel in the UK, was a runner up for the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A best seller in Pakistan, it was made into a TV miniseries there and into an operetta in Italy.
After September 11, the war in Afghanistan and the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, Hamid took a leave of absence from his McKinsey & Company job and returned to Pakistan, where he worked as a freelance journalist and on his second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Released to exceptional reviews, it is now being translated into 16 languages around the world.
Hamid became a British citizen in 2006 and currently resides in London.
