Biography
Azmeena Ladha is a native of Mombasa, Kenya, and now lives in England. She graduated as a graphic designer in Manchester and worked in publishing and for a trade union in London for many years before re-training to work with refugees and asylum seekers in south London.
Kenya forms an important social and physical backdrop for Azmeena's writing, which explores first and foremost human frailties and resilience. Her short stories have won awards and been included in NEW WRITING 13 (Picador, 2005), THE READER (University of Liverpool, 2005), and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. One was recently translated for the VRIJ NEDERLAND magazine in Holland.
Praise for Azmeena Ladha's writing:
‘RALLY is a story about growing up set in a very particular and strongly realised time and place, but universal in its themes and a pleasure to read. Azmeena Ladha is an observant, distinctive and compassionate writer, with a new voice, able to make us care about her characters – most of them innocents, in one way or another. Her child’s-eye viewpoint is vivacious and consistent, but she is able to sketch in deftly the social and political background, and create memorable and entertaining characters. The freshness, the ingenuity and the humour of the story are balanced by the reader’s troubling perceptions of a story only half-visible to the narrator. Shadows fall over the world of her bubbling, enthusiastic little heroine, but the book’s pleasures shine brightly to the last page.’
-- Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prizewinning author of WOLF HALL
'Writers like Fay Weldon, Emily Perkins, Vicky Grut, Helen Simpson and Azmeena Ladha write about relationships and families in variously attentive and surprising ways.'
-- Independent on Sunday
'Azmeena Ladha's TWENTY GODS is a marvellously wrought story with a delicacy of style and phrase that's very accomplished for a debutante.' -- Ashok Banker, Hindustan Times
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