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When a post on my blog is categorised as “fiction” and is also tagged “fiction”, it is safe to assume that it is fiction. Sometimes I share fragments here an there, while progress on the larger projects continues to stall. Sometimes something occurs to me while I am mowing the lawn or driving to work; [...]

In 1996 I wrote a novel entitled The Beauty of the Lion. From a literary point of view, it was a disaster, but for me as the writer it was remarkably influential. There was nothing remarkable about the book itself, except for its particularly sloppy style and poor punctuation. Indeed, I suppose the same story [...]

It is a sentiment that several of us have noticed being repeated with increasing frequency on the world-wide-web: that the Muslim blogosphere is dying a death, that all the good blogs have disappeared, that the Muslim blogging phenomenon has run its course and all that remains is tired, uninspirational, repetitive dross. As a so-called blogger [...]

The past two weeks have seen this blog go through the full mid-life crisis. First going into maintenance mode, then reappearing for a couple of days, then being deleted and replaced with the finale from a Walt Disney cartoon, then momentarily restored, only to be shunted into a sub-directory, to be abandoned in favour of [...]

A quick note to say thank you to those who read this website and decided to vote for it in the category of Best European Blog in the recent Brass Crescent thingymabob.

Long-term visitors to my old Neurocentric website know that I struggle with my writing: they have read To be or not to be?, Troubled Writer, Conversation with the nafs and Another Evaluation amongst many, many others.

Back before the summer I wrote a lot about writing and those concerns of mine about the responsibilities attached to it. Every couple of months I find myself re-evaluating my writing — which I think is a good thing — to keep myself in check. I want to keep in mind the idea that anything [...]

Weblogs have come under quite some fire recently in the newspaper I regularly buy. Janet Street-Porter‘s comment last week was followed a day later by an article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. In both cases their generalisations are quite amazing. For me and many others this medium is a mere tool. Around 1993 my introduction to the [...]

Apparently Brick Lane’s Bengali community doesn’t think much of Monica Ali’s novel, Brick Lane. Although the makers of a film adaption of the novel have now agreed not to capture the story in those streets, some of the protestors are still threatening to burn the book in public if filming goes ahead. The disgruntled claim [...]

It is interesting where my frequent digressions lead me. I have a tendency to see in other people’s writing what they did not intend, or never could have intended: the little snippet, the sentence or the word, which leads me off in an altogether new direction. Late last night I was thinking about that article [...]

I have been asked to write something about my love of writing, where it started and so on. It is an interesting question, especially when I look back. I am not well read nor am I learned. I did not have this interest throughout school – or at least I don’t think I did – [...]

Exactly a decade ago I spent every day, between the hours of about two in the afternoon and three in the morning, tapping out a novel called The Beauty of the Lion. I had just finished a short contract testing mapping software on the Science Park in Cambridge and had returned to my parents’ home. [...]