Dawn Images

The author who minces no words, Mohammed Hanif has bagged the third-highest civilian award of Pakistan, the Sitara-e-Imtiaz.

The former journalist and writer of the critically-acclaimed novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes took to Twitter to announce the news. Well, sort of...

“Thank you all for your lovely messages. Now can someone please tell me how does one collect it because GoP is a bit coy on the subject,” he wrote, adding that he was “thrilled at the prospects of meeting fellow winners Fidel and Amanullah. Hope we all get to party with President Mamnun.”

A voracious reader as a child, Mohammed Hanif grew up in a village in Punjab and then enlisted in the military to experience life outside a small town and trained as a fighter pilot. After leaving the military he entered journalism, and remained in London until 2008 before returning to Pakistan. He has worked as a journalist, a novelist and, most recently, a playwright.

His body of work also includes a feature film, The Long Night (2002), a BBC radio play, What Now, Now That We Are Dead? and the stage play The Dictator's Wife (2008). His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was published in 2011. Hanif's next novel, titled Red Birds, has been acquired by Bloomsbury and will see the light of day in September 2018.