11 Facts About Aamer Hussein

Aamer Hussein spent most summers with his mother's family in India.

Aamer Hussein studied in Ooty, South India, for two years before moving to London in 1970.

Aamer Hussein is fluent in seven languages: English, Urdu, Hindi, French, Italian, Spanish and Persian.

Aamer Hussein read Persian, Urdu and History at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and later taught Urdu for many years at the SOAS Language Centre.

Aamer Hussein has since lectured in the English Department at Queen Mary, University of London, was Director of the MA programme in National and International Literatures at the School of Advanced Study's Institute of English Studies and is Professorial Writing Fellow at the University of Southampton, as well as a professorial research associate at the Centre for the Study of Pakistan.

Aamer Hussein has held writing fellowships at the University of Southampton and at Imperial College London, and served as a judge for the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, the Impac Prize, the Commonwealth Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Aamer Hussein is a trustee of the magazine of international contemporary writing Wasafiri.

Aamer Hussein has edited a volume of stories by Pakistani women, Kahani, which includes his own translations from the Urdu of Altaf Fatima, Khalida Hussain and Hijab Imtiaz Ali.

Aamer Hussein was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2004, "probably the first writer of Pakistani origin to be elected".

Aamer Hussein's reviews have appeared in the Literary Review, The Times Literary Supplement, the New Statesman and are now regularly seen on the book pages of The Independent.

Aamer Hussein has written essays on Urdu literature for The Annual of Urdu Studies and Moving Worlds, and in 2012, he published a selection of stories in Urdu in the Karachi journal Duniyazad.