Daniyal Mueenuddin
Encyclopedia
Daniyal Mueenuddin is a Pakistani-American
author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, published in the United States by W. W. Norton in 2009, and in nineteen other countries in sixteen languages.
he became Secretary of Pakistan's Establishment Division, which administered the civil service (later he was the country's Chief Election Commissioner
). In the late 1950s he was posted for several years to Washington as chief negotiator of the Indus Waters Treaty
(1960) between India and Pakistan. While living there he met his future American wife Barbara, a reporter at The Washington Post
. After a courtship and marriage they moved to Pakistan
in 1960, living first in Rawalpindi
and later in Lahore
. Keeping with an agreement she had made with her father, a surgeon in Los Angeles who had heard of unsanitary conditions in Pakistani hospitals, his expectant mother flew back to the U.S. in March 1963, and Mueenuddin was born in Los Angeles in April. Two months later mother and child returned to Lahore, Pakistan, where Daniyal spent his childhood and attended Lahore American School
. The family spent long holidays on his father's family farm in South Punjab
, and Mueenuddin remembers this as a magical time which included long days hunting duck and partridge, picnics out in the Thar desert
at the abandoned Fort Derawar, and riding recalcitrant local ponies. Daniyal and his brother Tamur often visited the US in the summers. At age 13 his parents separated and the two boys moved with their mother back to the US, where Daniyal spent 5 years at prep-school, Groton School
in MA, graduating in 1981. Later he graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College
. The summer of his graduation he returned to Pakistan where his father, now in his 80s and failing health, was losing control of the family farm to its managers. His father asked him to stay in Pakistan and rescue the farm. It was a lonely and arduous life, but one well suited to Daniyal, who spent early mornings writing poetry, and evenings reading through the library that his mother had left behind. (Later in life Daniyal would thank his mother for teaching him "that becoming a writer was a legitimate thing to do." His mother was a Trustee of PEN American Center
and died in November 2009.) In 1990 his father died, leaving Daniyal more exposed but also more independent. He ran the farm as a business, and not in the traditional feudal way like many of his neighbors, by "hiring good managers, paying them well, and demanding a lot of them." In 1993, with the farm running fairly smoothly, he decided to spend time in the West again and moved back to the US where he attended Yale Law School
for three years, editing the Yale Journal of International Law
and serving as Director of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. After graduation he worked briefly at Human Rights Watch
and then as a corporate lawyer at the New York firm Debevoise & Plimpton
between 1998 and 2001. However he found the life unsatisfying, saying:
He enrolled in the MFA
program (writing) at the University of Arizona
at Tucson, where he earned a degree in 2004. His first published story was "Our Lady of Paris" published in Zoetrope: All-Story
in Fall 2006. This gained the attention of a literary agent, Bill Clegg, who then helped him to publish a story in Granta and three stories in The New Yorker. Mueenuddin's first collection of stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was published in February 2009 (4 new stories, plus the 4 previously published). Mueenuddin's writing is influenced by Anton Chekov, "I like the Russians, like everyone else. I am constantly reading Chekov. I am never not reading Chekov." Mueenuddin is currently working on a novel set in 1970's Pakistan.
Mueenuddin is married to Cecilie Brenden Mueenuddin, a Norwegian Arabist and Middle Eastern scholar, whom he met while on a Fulbright Scholarship in Oslo, Norway. His previous marriage was to New York artist and lawyer Rachel Jeanne Harris in 1999.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was the winner of The Story Prize for 2009, and the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
(Best First Book, Europe and South Asia). The collection was also a finalist for the 2009 National Book Awards, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize
, the 2010 Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award, and the 2010 Ondaatje Prize
. In addition, it was selected among TIME
magazine's top ten books of the year, Publishers Weekly's top ten books of 2009, The Economist's
top ten fiction books of 2009, The Guardian's
best books of the year, The New Statesman's
best books of the year, and The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year.
One of his short stories, "Nawabdin Electrician", was selected by Salman Rushdie for the Best American Short Stories
of 2008. Another story, "A Spoiled Man", was selected for the 2010 edition of The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.
"In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" has been published in 19 countries in 16 languages.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, published in the United States by W. W. Norton in 2009, and in nineteen other countries in sixteen languages.
Biography
Daniyal's father, Ghulam Mueenuddin, was a member of the Indian Civil Service (ICS), and after the Partition of IndiaPartition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...
he became Secretary of Pakistan's Establishment Division, which administered the civil service (later he was the country's Chief Election Commissioner
Election Commission of Pakistan
The Election Commission of Pakistan is an independent and autonomous constitutional body charged with the function of conducting transparent, free, fair and impartial elections to the National and Provincial Assemblies. The holding of elections to the office of the President and the Senate are,...
). In the late 1950s he was posted for several years to Washington as chief negotiator of the Indus Waters Treaty
Indus Waters Treaty
The Indus Waters Treaty is a water-sharing treaty between the Republic of India and Islamic Republic Of Pakistan, brokered by the World Bank . The treaty was signed in Karachi on September 19, 1960 by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President of Pakistan Mohammad Ayub Khan...
(1960) between India and Pakistan. While living there he met his future American wife Barbara, a reporter at The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
. After a courtship and marriage they moved to Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
in 1960, living first in Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi
Rawalpindi , locally known as Pindi, is a city in the Pothohar region of Pakistan near Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad, in the province of Punjab. Rawalpindi is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad...
and later in Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...
. Keeping with an agreement she had made with her father, a surgeon in Los Angeles who had heard of unsanitary conditions in Pakistani hospitals, his expectant mother flew back to the U.S. in March 1963, and Mueenuddin was born in Los Angeles in April. Two months later mother and child returned to Lahore, Pakistan, where Daniyal spent his childhood and attended Lahore American School
Lahore American School
Lahore American school is a private school based in Lahore, Pakistan.-About LAS:The Lahore American School is an independent co-educational day school which offers an educational program from preschool through grade 12 for students of all nationalities...
. The family spent long holidays on his father's family farm in South Punjab
South Punjab
South Punjab is the southernmost region of Pakistan's Punjab province. The districts of Bahawalpur, Multan, Rahim Yar Khan and D. G. Khan are geographically regarded as components of the region...
, and Mueenuddin remembers this as a magical time which included long days hunting duck and partridge, picnics out in the Thar desert
Thar Desert
The Thar Desert |Punjab]] province. The Cholistan Desert adjoins the Thar desert spreading into Pakistani Punjab province.-Location and description:...
at the abandoned Fort Derawar, and riding recalcitrant local ponies. Daniyal and his brother Tamur often visited the US in the summers. At age 13 his parents separated and the two boys moved with their mother back to the US, where Daniyal spent 5 years at prep-school, Groton School
Groton School
Groton School is a private, Episcopal, college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, U.S. It enrolls approximately 375 boys and girls, from the eighth through twelfth grades...
in MA, graduating in 1981. Later he graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
. The summer of his graduation he returned to Pakistan where his father, now in his 80s and failing health, was losing control of the family farm to its managers. His father asked him to stay in Pakistan and rescue the farm. It was a lonely and arduous life, but one well suited to Daniyal, who spent early mornings writing poetry, and evenings reading through the library that his mother had left behind. (Later in life Daniyal would thank his mother for teaching him "that becoming a writer was a legitimate thing to do." His mother was a Trustee of PEN American Center
PEN American Center
PEN American Center , founded in 1922 and based in New York City, works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship. The Center has a membership of 3,300 writers, editors, and translators...
and died in November 2009.) In 1990 his father died, leaving Daniyal more exposed but also more independent. He ran the farm as a business, and not in the traditional feudal way like many of his neighbors, by "hiring good managers, paying them well, and demanding a lot of them." In 1993, with the farm running fairly smoothly, he decided to spend time in the West again and moved back to the US where he attended Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
for three years, editing the Yale Journal of International Law
Yale Journal of International Law
The Yale Journal of International Law is a student-edited international law review at the Yale Law School . The journal publishes articles, essays, notes, and commentary that cover a wide range of topics in international and comparative law.-History:The Yale Journal of International Law is the...
and serving as Director of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. After graduation he worked briefly at Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
and then as a corporate lawyer at the New York firm Debevoise & Plimpton
Debevoise & Plimpton
Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is a prominent international law firm based in New York City. Founded in 1931 by Eli Whitney Debevoise and William Stevenson, Debevoise has been a long established leader in corporate litigation and large financial transactions. In recent years, its practice has taken on an...
between 1998 and 2001. However he found the life unsatisfying, saying:
- Sitting in my office on the forty-second floor of a black skyscraper in Manhattan, looking out over the East river, I gradually developed confidence in the stories I had lived through during those years on the farm. I realized that I was in a unique position to write these stories for a Western audience – stories about the farm and the old feudal ways, the dissolving feudal order and the new way coming, the sleek businessmen from the cities. I resigned from the law firm, returned to Pakistan, and began writing the stories that make up In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.
He enrolled in the MFA
Master of Fine Arts
A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...
program (writing) at the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...
at Tucson, where he earned a degree in 2004. His first published story was "Our Lady of Paris" published in Zoetrope: All-Story
Zoetrope: All-Story
Zoetrope: All-Story is an American literary magazine that was launched in 1997 by Francis Ford Coppola. Blooming from Francis Coppola's "Crazy Idea Department," All-Story is devoted to showcasing the most promising voices in short-fiction...
in Fall 2006. This gained the attention of a literary agent, Bill Clegg, who then helped him to publish a story in Granta and three stories in The New Yorker. Mueenuddin's first collection of stories In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was published in February 2009 (4 new stories, plus the 4 previously published). Mueenuddin's writing is influenced by Anton Chekov, "I like the Russians, like everyone else. I am constantly reading Chekov. I am never not reading Chekov." Mueenuddin is currently working on a novel set in 1970's Pakistan.
Mueenuddin is married to Cecilie Brenden Mueenuddin, a Norwegian Arabist and Middle Eastern scholar, whom he met while on a Fulbright Scholarship in Oslo, Norway. His previous marriage was to New York artist and lawyer Rachel Jeanne Harris in 1999.
Awards and nominations
Mueenuddin was the winner of the 2010 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was the winner of The Story Prize for 2009, and the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...
(Best First Book, Europe and South Asia). The collection was also a finalist for the 2009 National Book Awards, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize
2010 Pulitzer Prize
The 2010 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded on Monday, April 12, 2010. In journalism, The Washington Post won four awards while The New York Times won three. For the first time, an online source, ProPublica, won in what had previously been the sole province of print. A musical, Next to Normal, won the...
, the 2010 Los Angeles Times First Fiction Award, and the 2010 Ondaatje Prize
Ondaatje Prize
The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is given for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which evokes the "spirit of a place", and which is written by someone who is a citizen of or who has been...
. In addition, it was selected among TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine's top ten books of the year, Publishers Weekly's top ten books of 2009, The Economist's
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
top ten fiction books of 2009, The Guardian's
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
best books of the year, The New Statesman's
The New Statesman
The New Statesman is an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time...
best books of the year, and The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year.
One of his short stories, "Nawabdin Electrician", was selected by Salman Rushdie for the Best American Short Stories
Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.-Edward O'Brien:The...
of 2008. Another story, "A Spoiled Man", was selected for the 2010 edition of The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.
"In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" has been published in 19 countries in 16 languages.
Works
- In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, W. W. Norton, New York City, NY 2009 ISBN 978-0-393-33720-4
External links
- InOtherRooms.com, Daniyal Mueenuddin's Official Website
- Video: Daniyal Mueenuddin and Moshin Hamid at The Asia Society (Filmed on Feb. 23, 2009, Fora.tv)
- Video: The Story Prize reading with Victoria Patterson and Wells TowerWells TowerWells Tower is an American writer of short stories and non-fiction.-Early life, education, and early career:Tower was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, but grew up in North Carolina....
. March 3, 2010. - Stories by Daniyal Mueenuddin published in The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
- "Our Lady of Paris", Zoetrope: All-StoryZoetrope: All-StoryZoetrope: All-Story is an American literary magazine that was launched in 1997 by Francis Ford Coppola. Blooming from Francis Coppola's "Crazy Idea Department," All-Story is devoted to showcasing the most promising voices in short-fiction...
, Fall 2006, Vol. 10, No. 3