Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Pakistan. She is the author of In the City by the Sea (1998), Kartography (2002) (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize), Salt and Saffron (2002) and Broken Verses (2005). In 1999 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature and in 2004 the Patras Bokhari Award—both from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. Shamsie lives in London and Karachi.