Fiction. Moazzam's Sheikh's sexually-charged tales unfold against a backdrop of colonization and ethnic tensions in Pakistan and the Middle East, and they also explore the immigrant's dilemma in the United States. He "maps the ways in which South Asian identities cohere and threaten to disintegrate at the contradictory intersections of memory, desire, connection, and exploitation.... Sheikh's voice too, is unique, bringing to the English short story the flavor and verve of the Urdu/Hindi tradition"—A. Chakladar.
Author Hometown: San Francisco, CA USA
About the author: Moazzam Sheikh was born in Lahore. He studied business, film and library science and is currently a librarian in the Art/Music/Recreation department at the San Francisco public library. In addition, he teaches at City College of San Francisco, writes fiction, and translates fiction from Urdu/Hindi/Punjabi/English. His latest work of translation is Stories of Intizar Husain (Katha). He has also edited a collection of stories, A Letter from India: Contemporary Pakistani Short Stories (Penguin). Moazzam is one of the founding members of Another Subcontinent.
Reviews:
Lisa Lau @ DesiLit Daily
audio: interview @ The Progressive
Rumjhum Biswas @ Writers & Writerisms
“Born storyteller Moazzam Sheikh’s accomplished tales move between two continents and worlds to tell of desire, war and the interplay of power and powerlessness in Pakistan, India, the Middle East and San Francisco. Tales also imbued with the immigrant s sense of loss and quest for self amid new landscapes.”
—Muneeza Shamsie
“THE IDOL LOVER is an eloquent document of miscommunication. Moazzam Sheikh’s prose is fragrant with what might have been as it goes about the business of chronicling what has been. This volume is a passionate and elegant contribution to fiction set in the subcontinent.”
—Amitabha Bagchi
“While steeped in social reality, Moazzam Sheikh’s stories of many worlds and locales are marked by a dreamlike quality. His narratives of South Asia and San Francisco are suffused with body rhythms and search for connection in an intriguing kaleidoscope of the erotic and the cosmopolitan....”
—Amritjit Singh