Aatish Taseer

Alanna Heiss and Beatrice Johnson sit down with author Aatish Taseer, to discuss the 2011 English publication of his novel, Noon and other works including The Temple-Goers (2010), the memoir Stranger to History (2009), and articles for Time Magazine, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and Esquire, among others. A loosely autobiographical novel, Noon tells the story of Rehan Tabassum, a young man whose heart is split across two cultures' troubled divide, through his mother as the symbol of a new India, and his estranged father across the border in Pakistan. Aatish discusses the inspiration for this new novel, the nature and paradoxes of India - Pakistan tensions, and the very public assassination of his own father by one of his bodyguards in January 2011. Aatish was born in 1980, is the son of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and late Pakistani politician and businessman Salmaan Taseer. He lives between London and Delhi.

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