Sunday, March 2, 2014

Five great aliens in literature

Mohsin Hamid is the author of the novels Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. His fiction has been translated into over 30 languages, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, featured on bestseller lists, and adapted for the cinema. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and the Paris Review, and his essays in the Guardian, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. Born in 1971, he has lived about half his life, on and off, in Lahore. He also spent part of his early childhood in California, attended Princeton and Harvard, and worked for a decade as a management consultant in New York and London, mostly part-time.

One title from his account of favorite literary aliens, as shared at the Telegraph:
If it’s a pre-9/11 sensibility you’re hankering for, that bygone era when Arab-seeming tribes of natural-resource controlling jihadists could still be cast as heroes in an American bestseller, look no further than Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965).
Read about the other entries on the list.

Dune is among Annalee Newitz and Emily Stamm's top ten stories where technology is indistinguishable from magic, Robin Sloan's five science fiction books that matter, Mohsin Hamid's six favorite books, io9's best and worst childbirth scenes in sci-fi & fantasy and top ten science fiction novels you pretend to have read, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best vendettas in literature and ten of the best deserts in literature.

Mohsin Hamid's most influential book.

Mohsin Hamid's 10 favorite books.

Writers Read: Mohsin Hamid (March 2013).

--Marshal Zeringue