Tahmima Anam

Tahmima Anam

Birthday: 8 October
Star sign: Libra
Qualification: Scholarship for Mount Holyoke College, PhD in anthropology from Harvard University, master of arts in creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Skills: writing
Languages: English, Bengali
Current Location: Bangladesh
Phone: 0330 330 9473

Tahmima Anam is a Bangladeshi-born British writer, novelist and columnist. Her first novel, A Golden Age (2007) was the Best First Book winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes. Her follow-up novel, The Good Muslim, was nominated for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. She is the granddaughter of Abul Mansur Ahmed and daughter of Mahfuz Anam.

In March 2007, Anam’s first novel, A Golden Age, was published by John Murray. Inspired by her parents, who were freedom fighters during the war, she set the novel during the Bangladesh Liberation War. She had also researched the war during her post-graduation career. For the benefit of her research, she stayed in Bangladesh for two years and interviewed hundreds of war fighters. She also worked on the set of Tareque and Catherine Masud’s critically acclaimed film Matir Moina (The Clay Bird), which reflects the events during that war.

In 2011, The Good Muslim, a sequel to A Golden Age, was published and long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2015, her short story “Garments”, inspired by the Rana plaza building collapse, was published and won the O. Henry Award and was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. At the same year, she became a judge for The Man Booker International Prize 2016.