Uzma Aslam Khan

Her fifth novel, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali , set in the Andaman Islands preceding and during the Second World War, when the islands were a British penal colony seized by the Japanese, was released in the Indian subcontinent by Context/Westland Books in 2019. The novel has received critical praise for its lyrical prose, and for being a "vibrant defiance of traditionally accepted histories ... (focusing instead) on marginalised and forgotten lives that history would rather ignore, creating a brilliant gash in the narrative structure historically manufactured." For its reconstruction of a time and place never before written in English-language fiction, it has been called a kind of record in itself Author Pankaj Mishra has said: "The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali brilliantly excavates a forgotten past of several societies and honours its human complexity with a narrative of delicate precision. As affecting as it is intellectually powerful, the novel is a master lesson in the art of historical fiction" and author Mohammed Hanif, called it "A glorious novel about a forgotten place and a part of our history that we hardly ever talk about." The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali was shortlisted for the TATA Literature Live! Best Book of the Year Award for Fiction 2019.

Khan's fourth novel, Thinner than Skin, was published in 2012 in the US, and subsequently in Canada, India, France, Turkey, UK, and Pakistan, and is slated for release in Egypt in 2020. It was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and won the inaugural KLF-Embassy of France Fiction Prize at the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) in February 2014. In a joint statement, the jury explained its choice for selecting Khan's book for "The eloquent and elegant way in which she reveals a myriad of different worlds with masterly restraint. The novel animates mountains, lakes, wind and fire and other elements of nature that echo the complex emotions of her characters. Through the carefully structured plot and the well-wrought patterns of recurring images and incidents, emerge insights about homeland, belonging and dislocation, central to contemporary Pakistani life."

Khan's third novel, The Geometry of God, was printed by Rupa & Co. India in 2008. It tells the story of Amal, who, as a child, accidentally discovers the fossil of the ear of the first whale – or 'dog-whale', as she calls it – while on a dig with her paleontologist grandfather. Despite the pressures imposed on her by her family, and by society, Amal goes on to become the first woman paleontologist to work with men in the mountains of Pakistan to look for fossils of ancient whales. The novel was praised for boldly charting new territory, and for its characters. Khan was becoming recognized for her frank exploration of sexuality, unique in Pakistani English-language writing. Following its release in India, The Geometry of God was published in Spain, Italy, France, the US, the UK, and Pakistan. It won the Bronze Award for multicultural fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, 2010; was selected as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2009; and was a finalist of Foreword magazine's Best Books of 2009.

Khan's fiction has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including "Look, But With Love" (an extract from Trespassing) in And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women (The Feminist Press, 2008); "Ice, Mating" in Granta magazine's highly popular edition on Pakistan; "The Missing" in Tehelka magazine; and "The News at His Back" (an extract from Thinner Than Skin) in The Massachusetts Review. Her short story "My Mother is a Lunar Crater" won second prize in the twenty-second annual Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction Competition in 2018. The following year, her story "Plum Island" won first prize in Zoetrope: All Story Short Fiction Competition 2019.

In addition to her novels and short stories, Khan has published essays and articles around the world, including in the Guardian UK, Dawn Pakistan, First City India, and for the online political journal, CounterPunch. Included in her articles for CounterPunch is her 2008 letter to Barack Obama, "Where's the Change, Barack?"

Uzma Aslam Khan is a Pakistani writer. Her five novels include Trespassing (2003), The Geometry of God (2008), Thinner Than Skin (2012) and The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali (2019).

Her second novel, Trespassing, was published simultaneously by Flamingo/HarperCollins in the UK and Penguin Books India in 2003. It has been translated into fourteen languages in eighteen countries. Set in the 1990s during the aftermaths of the Afghan War and Gulf War and completed a few months before 9/11, the book has been called "prescient" for how it illustrates the dark and troubled context of the west's involvement in the east and a precursor to the post-9/11 fiction from Pakistan that was to come. As Khan puts it "So much of this book is about history coming back to haunt you." Writing for Outlook magazine, Nilanjana S. Roy wrote that "While Khan's prose may be subtle, her style is as forceful as any of the great storytellers... Khan is creating a tradition and style of her own as a writer." Trespassing was shortlisted for the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Eurasia region.

Khan's first novel, The Story of Noble Rot, was published by Penguin Books India in 2001, and reissued by Rupa & Co. in 2009. It was met with positive reviews in major periodicals and newspapers in Pakistan and India, and Khan was recognized as "a voice to watch out for."