Novelist Mohsin Hamid talks with Kathleen McCaul “about Pakistani literature, art and politics, and cities as lovers.”
“’Geo-politics is important to me as a writer," Hamid explains. ‘The whole notion that politics should be separate from art, that it corrupts good writing, strikes me as problematic. The nuclear tests in 1999, the near war in 2001 between Pakistan and India - these were major exclamation marks in history for me personally, and my personal life is indivisible from the political world I live in. Lahore is just a few hours' drive away from Delhi. It feels very, very strange that my parents and sister are just around the corner and I can't go and visit them. It's part of the whole absurdity of the 20th century nation state and these nation states in particular.’” – “Break for the Border Country,” by Kathleen McCaul, The Guardian