Tag: Mohsin Hamid

  • Obamas to adapt Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Exit West’ for Netflix with Riz Ahmed in the lead

    Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground Productions on Friday announced six new projects in development for Netflix Inc, including a love story with a supernatural twist and a young adult thriller.

    The former president and first lady’s Higher Ground Productions will adapt British-Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West into a film, according to a statement from Netflix. The book tells the story of a young couple who find magical doors to transport them to other places and land in the middle of a global refugee crisis. Obama had also named it as one of the best books he read in 2017. According to The New York Times, the upcoming project will star the Pakistani-British actor Riz Ahmed.

    Other film projects include a science-fiction movie called Satellite, which will be produced with T Street, a production company run by Star Wars director Rian Johnson and producer Ram Bergman. Another is Tenzing, the story of the Nepalese-Indian man who first reached the summit of Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand.

    The Young Wife is a feature film that follows a woman on the day of her wedding who feels out of sync as a storm approaches.

    The company also is developing two TV series. Firekeeper’s Daughter is a thriller based on a young adult novel by Angeline Boulley about an 18-year-old Ojibwe tribe member who reluctantly goes undercover in a police investigation on her reservation.

    The other series is a nature documentary about national parks.

    Netflix said the projects will be released over the next few years but did not give exact release dates.

    Read more – Netflix to release a new movie every week in 2021

    The Obamas signed a multiyear production deal with Netflix in 2018. Their earlier Netflix projects include American Factory, which won an Oscar in 2020 for best documentary.

  • BBC’s list of 100 novels that shaped our world include books by Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie

    BBC’s list of 100 novels that shaped our world include books by Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie

    Pakistani authors Mohsin Hamid and Kamila Shamsie have made it to BBC’s 100 novels that shaped our world list. The list features renowned authors from across the world making it a great honour for both the authors to be featured on the list.

    BBC, as part of their year-long celebration of literature, shared a list of ‘100 novels that shaped our world,’ which have been written over the last 300 years.

    An expert panel consisting of six leading British writers, curators and critics were part of the compilation that featured books that have made a large cultural and personal impact on a global scale.

    The list features work ranging from classics to contemporary writers from around the world and has been organised into themes which are: Identity, Love, Sex and Romance, Adventure, Life, Death and Other Worlds, Politics, Power and Protest, Class and Society, Coming of Age, Family and Friendship, Crime and Conflict and Rule Breakers.

    While Kamila’s Home Fire was listed in the ‘Politics, Power & Protest’ category, Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist was part of the ‘Crime & Conflict’ category.

    BBC’s list ranges from classics to contemporary, with works like Jane Austin’s Pride & Prejudice and JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series making it in their own genres.