Nadeem Aslam moved with his family to the UK aged 14 when his father, a Communist, fled President Zia's regime.

His next novel, 2004's Maps for Lost Lovers, is set in the midst of an immigrant Pakistani community in an English town in the north.

[6] On 11 February 2011, it was short-listed for the Warwick Prize for Writing[7] Aslam's fourth novel is The Blind Man's Garden (2013).

It is set in Western Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan and looks at the War on Terror through the eyes of local, Islamist characters.

He has mentioned Vasko Popa, Ivan V. Lalić, Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Herman Melville, John Berger, VS Naipaul, Michael Ondaatje, and Bruno Schulz.