Zarrar Said

Zarrar Said was born in Lahore and spent his childhood between Dubai, Lahore and the US. He has an undergraduate degree in business from The Ohio State University and a graduate degree in quantitative finance from George Washington University.

Zarrar's debut novel, Pureland, is a fictionalized narrative based on the tragic life of Dr. Abdus Salam, a Nobel prize winning physicist who was excommunicated by the country of his birth and who spent his entire adult life in exile due to his religious affiliations. Dr. Salam's achievements in science and his remarkable story was then eradicated from his country's educational curriculum. Pureland is the retelling of that tragedy in the form of a love story told through magical realism.

Pureland embodies themes of lost homelands, class discrimination and dogmatic politics. Zarrar believes that societies suffer from the prejudices they keep. Pureland itself became one such story, with bookstores in South Asia deeming it too controversial to sell.

Zarrar currently lives and works in New York City.