Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

Claire Chambers (University of York)

Ed. by Muneeza Shamsie, Independent Scholar - Asia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 10.3.2: Pakistani and Bangladeshi Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Pavan Kumar Malreddy (J W Goethe University of Frankfurt), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Muneeza Shamsie (Independent Scholar - Asia), Niaz Zaman (Independent University Bangladesh)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2000

Places

Pakistan (Country of Origin)
United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The writing of the first draft of Mohsin Hamid’s debut novel, Moth Smoke (2000), was supervised by Toni Morrison while Hamid was studying at Princeton University in New Jersey, USA, in the early 1990s. He finished the novel while working for a management consultancy company in New York. It went on to win a Betty Trask Award and reached the finals of the PEN/Hemingway Award.

Moth Smoke is set in Lahore during the summer of 1998, the year Pakistan tested its nuclear bomb. The economic reverberations of the nuclear tests were severe, as America acted swiftly to rescind its aid programme to Pakistan. Hamid accordingly focuses on the disintegration of the comfortable life of Daru, a man in his late twenties. …

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2970 words

Citation: Chambers, Claire. "Moth Smoke". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 July 2020 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23136, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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