In Daniyal Mueenuddin's gorgeously subtle, perfectly spare collection of eight linked stories about an extended family of Pakistani landowners, we are able to see characters struggling with the norms Pakistani society has placed on them. We are huge suckers for linked stories and these are so well done it took our breath away. Other Rooms, Other Wonders just won a slew of prizes (including the Story Prize) and was a finalist for the National Book Award, so many folks believe he is the favorite to win in this category. A recent congratulatory tweet about his Story win got a ton of RTs...so there's your unscientific polling on his chances. If there was a shoo-in in this category, Mueenuddin's book is it.

I was sitting right behind Daniyal Mueenuddin in a dark Manhattan auditorium when he was announced the winner of the $20,000 Story Prize.

Last night at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, the Pakistani-American writer Daniyal Mueenuddin was awarded the Story Prize for his excellent collection “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” several stories of which first appeared in The New Yorker. The prize—a whopping $20,000—is the largest of any annual American book award.

In eight textured stories that stretch across decades, Daniyal Mueenuddin illuminates feudal Pakistan and its decay. Whether he's writing in the contemporary moment or of times long past, he evokes characters with empathy and a clear eye; their choices feel vital, hopeful, wrenching. Each story, on its own, shines; layered together, there is a celebration of the beauty of the landscape, humor in the everyday, the irrefutable power of family and a lingering sadness for all who have not gotten quite what they wanted.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders earned Daniyal Mueenuddin the $20,000 Story Prize last week. He beat out two other finalists, who will also take home a cash prize of $5,000 each.

In a ceremony at the New School in New York City on Wednesday night, Daniyal Mueenuddin was awarded the 2009 Story Prize for his collection "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders." The collection has received many commendations -- it was a finalist for the National Book Award and is nominated for the L.A. Times book prize for first fiction -- and Mueenuddin has been running to keep up with them. He splits his time between his farm in Pakistan -- the setting for the stories in his book -- and cities like New York and London.

Writer Daniyal Mueenuddin won the Story Prize for short fiction on Wednesday for "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders," a compendium of eight interconnected short stories set in the 1980s amid feudal lands in southern Pakistan.
Mueenuddin, a former lawyer who lives in London and Punjab, thanked his agent and his recently deceased mother after being presented the sixth annual award, which includes a $20,000 prize.

In his interview, Mueenuddin (pictured, via) talked about growing up on his family farm in Pakistan (which he now manages). "I was brought up by servants," he said, but stressed that his experiences on the farm were crucial for his writing. "One of the problems for writers is that they live as writers," he concluded. "That does not provide very much material."

Science/Technology: Naming Nature by Carol Kaesuk Yoon. Biography: Dorothea Lange by Linda Gordon. Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.

The shortlist for regional winners has been unveiled in the race to win the influential 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

For many years I have run a farm in Pakistan’s southern Punjab. Most of the stories in this book have their origins in my experiences there, and many were written there. Half-Pakistani and half-American, I have spent equal amounts of time in each country, and so, knowing both cultures well and belonging to both, I equally belong to neither, look at both with an outsider’s eye. These stories are written from that place in between, written to help both me and my reader bridge the gap.

It is impossible to say enough about these subtle, deep, painful stories which remind me of Chekhov.

Daniyal Mueenuddin was raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and Elroy, Wisconsin, and practiced law in New York for a few years before deciding to reside on a farm in Pakistan’s southern Punjab region. This geographical mix to his background is certainly prevalent in the emotionally lavish and densely interconnected pieces gathered within In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, one of the more exciting short story collections of recent years.

There are few absolutes, but I’m almost certain that there aren’t two Wisconsin farmers out there who also tend land in Pakistan. And that only one Pakistani farmer is also a 2009 National Book Award finalist.

Daniyal Mueenuddin, all these things and more, lands in the Midwest today for a regional book tour for "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders," and he says it feels like a homecoming.

It's not every day that you pick up a book cover and read that its author was "brought up in Lahore, Pakistan and Elroy, Wisconsin." But Daniyal Mueenuddin, son of an American mother

This year's finalists for The Story Prize are:

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W. W. Norton)
Drift by Victoria Patterson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Because of Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Rohinton Mistry, to mention just a few of the most prominent authors, American readers have long been able to enjoy one terrific Indian novel after another. But Daniyal Mueenuddin's IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, is likely to be the first book by a Pakistani writer.

One book I enjoyed talking about in hardcover that's just blown out the door in paperback is Daniyal Mueenuddin's In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. We sold 9 copies of the book, which is very nice, but we're close to 50 in paperback already.

Every newspaper and magazine has released lists of their favorite books from the past year. The Daily Beast presents the ultimate best-of-the-year list by compiling the books that have appeared on the most lists (from The New York Times to the Chicago Tribune to The Economist) to come up with our definitive list of the best fiction and nonfiction this year.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (buy it) takes readers into modern Pakistan through a series of vivid short stories by Daniyal Mueenuddin.

As 2009 draws to a close, we’ve been given the formidable task of culling the finest literature from the year. As always, it was tough picking out the best from a bevy of books published in the last 12 months. But who won? In the fiction category, it was Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. As for nonfiction, the always reliable Dave Eggers topped the list with his Hurricane Katrina-centric book, Zeitoun.

Fifty years ago, Bernard Malamud won the National Book Award for his story collection The Magic Barrel. There are echoes of that book's casual mastery and patience in Mueenuddin's debut collection, which was a finalist for the same award this year. Only Mueenuddin's debut doesn't unfold in the Jewish enclaves of Brooklyn, but rather the mud-clapped floors of servant quarters in rural Pakistan. His characters, like Malamud's, are often stuck in an old order, even as the world tilts on and Pakistan's feudal society begins to crumble.

This book was a finalist for the National Book Awards and is starting to turn up in many “Best of the Year” lists, for good reason. It’s a mesmerizing read about a way of life that is now almost extinct. Set mostly in rural Punjab and the city of Lahore, these interwoven stories, which take place over several decades, explore the lives of both rich and poor under Pakistan’s rigid, almost feudal class structure. All the characters are related to, or dependent on, a wealthy landowner who is only vaguely aware of what happens to them as they live out their lives in the “other rooms” on his land and in his homes. Every room has its secret story, every character a vibrant, sometimes tragic life.

This book was a finalist for the National Book Awards and is starting to turn up in many "Best of the Year" lists, for good reason. It's a mesmerizing read about a way of life that is now almost extinct. Set mostly in rural Punjab and the city of Lahore, these interwoven stories, which take place over several decades, explore the lives of both rich and poor under Pakistan's rigid, almost feudal class structure. All the characters are related to, or dependent on, a wealthy landowner who is only vaguely aware of what happens to them as they live out their lives in the "other rooms" on his land and in his homes. Every room has its secret story, every character a vibrant, sometimes tragic life.

Alexander McCall Smith chooses SEVEN DAYS IN THE ART WORLD. William Dalrymple chooses IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS. Christopher Brookmyre chooses THE ABYSSINIAN PROOF. Janice Galloway chooses MURIEL SPARK: THE BIOGRAPHY.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Bloomsbury, £14.99) is an astonishing collection of short stories by the new star of the South Asian fiction, Daniyal Mueenuddin. The author's humane and humourous appreciation of rural life, seen from the point of view of the landlord, depicts a world familiar from "Sketches from a Huntsman's Album," but with the action transposed from the Russia steppe to the Pakistani Punjab. Like Turgenev, Mueenuddin creates a world peopled by rural folk, generously sketched with a wonderful freshness and lightness.

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of linked stories, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders” (Norton), set in contemporary Pakistan. These are beautifully limpid and luminous, reminiscent of early Naipaul, and range across society with enviable ease.

A remarkable debut by a Punjabi writer who has gained plaudits from Mohsin Hamid and Salman Rushdie. A small book that reveals, in every detail, the extent to which life in Pakistan is dictated as much by whom you know as what you do.

The Indo-Pak quaint narrative tale is an overexplored genre these days, but still I enjoyed this very much. It is "full of life," while sidestepping the cliches of other books that are described as such. Or were all those cliches enjoyable in the first place? Recommended, surprisingly.

The son of a Pakistani civil servant and an American writer, Daniyal Mueenuddin grew up in Lahore and Wisconsin, trained as a lawyer in the U.S. and then returned to rural Pakistan to run his family's farm. He writes — in an unadorned, mesmerizing style — with both a deep understanding of Pakistani culture and an appreciation for what Western audiences know, or don't know, about life in a country that features far more prominently in the news than on the fiction shelf. The eight stories that make up his debut collection are marked by conflict and corruption — he's especially attuned to the subtle power struggles that can infect a household — but in this bleak environment, it's the little victories that keep his characters hopeful.

Contemporary Pakistan is a place where one man may bed down in a wooden crate and another in a mansion, where women of all classes must seek the protection of men, where there’s stealing and then there’s stealing. The eight stories in this impressive debut collection capture it all with remarkably clear-eyed compassion.

The best novel I read this year was Rawi Hage's COCKROACH (Hamish Hamilton), which tells the story of an ungrateful immigrant, filled with angst and attitude, in a Montreal which could be Kafka's Prague. It is a dark book, narrated with verve and brilliance. It made me jump for joy. Any writer who borrows a piece of a Capote book title is asking for it, but Daniyal Mueenuddin's IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS, set in worlds of rich and poor, east and west, has such razor sharpness and lyric tenderness that it gets away with it. Anyone writing "you only had to see her disjoint a chicken to know the depths and heights of her carnality" gets my vote.

Writers use the phrase "back story" to mean the background or history of their characters. Morning Edition is asking three acclaimed writers for the back story of world events. All were finalists for this year's National Book Award. First up is Pakistani author Daniyal Mueenuddin, who set his book in Pakistan. He talks with Steve Inskeep about his book of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

The list includes Daniyal Mueenuddin, Linda Gordon, and Morris Dickstein,

Mr. Mueenuddin transcends place; he’s as American as he wants to be, even if most of his stories take place in the region served by Pakistan’s M-2 motorway and not Wisconsin’s I-94.

IN the steamy heat of central Pakistan, a novelist is writing. He describes a hidden world of servants and their feudal masters, the powerlessness of poverty and the corruption that glues it all together. These lives, tucked away in the mango groves, grand estates and mud-walled villages of rural Pakistan, are rarely seen by outsiders. But the writer, Daniyal Mueenuddin, a Pakistani-American who lives here, has brought them into focus in a collection of short stories, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” published this year by W. W. Norton.

Another virtuoso book I want to recommend is Other Rooms, Other Wonders, a collection of stories by the Pakistani-American writer Daniyal Mueenuddin. I can't praise Mueenuddin's work too much: He has the gifts of insight into human behavior of Alice Munro, the gift for detail we find in Updike and William Trevor, and the ability to make sentences and paragraphs that pack the punch of something out of James Salter and Richard Ford.

We've been quite keen on Daniyal Mueenuddin's debut collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, so we're delighted to have him sit for a Three Minute Interview (3MI), combined with a special Friday giveaway at the end. Remember the 3MI rules - the first three questions are custom, the remaining seven are the same for all comers.

Daniyal Mueenuddin's linked stories offer intimate glimpses into the lives of people connected by an aging member of Pakistan's fading aristocracy. From servant to landowner, Muenuddin treats the passions, intrigues, and struggles of each of his characters with the same respect.

As you go on through such small tragedies, you realise this book could have been a novel about a particular dynasty, a family saga, but that would have meant filling in the gaps between the stories, making lives connect in ways that they resisted and it would not have been half as good.

Mueenuddin’s first book, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” contains eight luminous stories about class and power in a country undergoing radical change. Bloomberg critic Craig Seligman’s review said the author “makes it clear that as Pakistan shifts from a feudal economy to an industrial one, its brutality is only increasing.”

Daniyal Mueenuddin in conversation with Moshin Hamid. Filmed at the Asia Society in New York on Feb. 23, 2009.

Part 2 of 2. In this second part of a two-part video interview with Daniyal Mueenuddin, we talk about Pakistan -- the power struggles between genders and class and its inevitable plunge into chaos. Also, we discuss the wonderful and delightful benefits of misery.

Part 1 of 2. This video interview with Mueenuddin takes place in Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, California. In the interview, we discuss how farming affects his writing, the attractions of "ethnic lit" and his penchant for poetry.

NPR Morning Edition. Air Date: March 6, 2009. Writer Daniyal Mueenuddin straddles two worlds. Born of an American mother and a Pakistani father, he grew up mostly in Pakistan, with frequent visits to his mother's family in Wisconsin. After attending Dartmouth for his undergraduate degree and Yale for a law degree, he returned to Pakistan, where he now runs his father's family farm in the Southern Punjab region.

"It's amazing. I'm blown away," he said. "I'm amazed that it even sold. It's a book of short stories about a farm in Pakistan! You'd think nobody would want to read that, but it sold for a good amount and people are reading it and liking it. Incredible."

Last week, Daniyal Mueenuddin took a break from growing mangoes in southern Punjab to read to audiences across America from his début short-story collection, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders." Before snagging good seats at Mueenuddin's reading at the Politics and Prose bookstore, in Washington, D.C., I chatted briefly with the writer.

We are so used to thinking of Pakistan as a country riven by strife that we can barely imagine normal life - the passing of generations, family rebellions and strategies for coping with everyday crises. These linked stories take us into a Pakistan we hardly ever see in print - the old aristocracy, the landowners and gentlemen-farmers, the farm managers and servants and peasants, the black sheep of the extended family, the passing of the old world, bit by bit.

As the title suggests, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders," is a collection of many angles, or windows, that we, along with Mueenuddin's characters, look out from and into. K.K. Harouni may be the common link, but at the end of the book he remains the least in focus. He is simply what holds it together, the hole at the center around which the spokes -- the servants, the stories and the collection itself -- revolve.

Those of us who hail from cities and locales such as Bahawalpur, Multan, and Rahim Yar Khan will greatly appreciate the recognition which Mueenuddin's book bestows. A gifted Pakistani author with an eye for rural society and an ear for rural dialects has put regions where the majority of Pakistan toils on the world literary map. For these reasons, not to mention the first rate writing as well as the edifying surprises in each story, this book is a triumph for a long ignored and misunderstood nation.

Class is destiny in Mueenuddin's world: Some of his most memorable characters are menial strivers who come to grief when they try to improve their lot in life.

Air Date: Feb. 20, 2009

A resignation to life's blatant unfairness permeates Mueenuddin's prose. There are no cries of exasperation or outbursts of anger, but always the steady hand of an exquisitely original writer.

Reading Daniyal Mueenuddin’s mesmerizing first collection, “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” is like watching a game of blackjack, the shrewd players calculating their way beyond their dealt cards in an attempt to beat the dealer. Some bust, others surrender. But in Mueenuddin’s world, no one wins.

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I quickly became engrossed in his stories about life in the cities and villages of Pakistan—this is definitely one of the first great collections of 2009, and if I know the folks at The Story Prize, they should already be setting it aside for the shortlist from which they draw their shortlist.

Interview with Amy Boaz

One of my favorite reads this past year was a collection of short stories by Nam Le, "The Boat", but after reading this collection by Daniyal Mueenuddin– titled "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders"– I feel a literary battle brewing for my top recommendation of the year.

IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS. The supernova debut of 2009. The buzz will be deafening. Reserve front row seats at your local bookstore now. Publications in New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope. Pakistani stories about class. Watch for it. (February)

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