Home Boy launched in Islamabad

Home Boy, a novel by H.M. Naqvi, was launched at Khaas Art Gallery in Islamabad on April 22. Home Boy is Naqvi’s maiden attempt. Born in London in 1974, Naqvi is a Pakistani novelist, who presently resides in Karachi. Having obtaining degrees in English Literature and Economics from Georgetown University, Naqvi worked in the financial services industry for almost a decade before deciding to pursue a career in writing.

He obtained a graduate degree in creative writing from Boston University and subsequently taught the same for some years while working on his novel at the same time. Naqvi’s exuberant sentences burst with rhythms, while staying clear of bombast. “Home Boy is a remarkably engaging novel that delights as it disturbs,” the New York Times Book Review said.

Naqvi is a recipient of the Phelam Prize, awarded annually by the American Academy of Poets and was also granted a Lannan Fellowship. Naqvi served as the editor-in-chief of Georgetown Journal, one of the oldest literary journals in the USA. He read out prose at the Nuyorican, Lollapalooza and Green Mills Jazz Clubs and also on National Public Radio and BBC World Service. He also represented Pakistan in the National Poetry Slam in 1996.

Crown Books launched Naqvi’s novel Home Boy in 2009 and it was followed by some glowing reviews. Lee Siegel, author of Love in a Dead Language calls the book a “marvelous literary achievement shaped by an irresistibly cool, refreshingly humane and distinctly curried sensibility. From the word go, it is replete with larger-than-life characters and big ideas. It will make you think, laugh out aloud, possibly cry and at times dance with joy.”

Full report here Daily Times