Born in Lahore Pakistan in 1960, Maniza Naqvi now lives in Washington DC
and works at the World Bank. Her work is in the areas of peace, poverty
alleviation, demoblization of militaries and building good governance at
community levels in post conflict countries.
Her first novel, Mass Transit, was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. It is set in Karachi, and focuses on the departures and arrivals; the orientations and disorientations; the integrations and disintegrations of migration and immigration, through the lives of three families.
Her recent novel, On Air weaves its plot around the theme of loss, love, desire and death. The plot unfolds over a six hour period in which the main character Naz tells stories to listeners and callers over the radio on a late night talk show slot which she has been offered to fill for just one night.
Naqvi has just finished writing her third novel. She says:
As a writer, I'm particularly interested in the reassembling of memory into visions, then deconstructing it into a story, then reconstructing it and mapping it differently as imagination. Its my evidence that time exists. Perhaps I work out of fear, of losing and fear of having no evidence of time passing. But most probably, its just the sheer joy, of it, a celebration, of passing through time.
