Author of
The Permitted Hours: Muslim Life in India’s Hindu Laboratory
Zahir Janmohamed is an assistant professor of English at Bowdoin College. He received his MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan where he received awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting. In 2019, the podcast he co-founded about food, race, gender, and class called Racist Sandwich was nominated for a James Beard Award. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Guernica, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, and many other publications. He has received fellowships and scholarships from MacDowell, Kundiman, Tin House, VONA, Breadloaf, and many other places. Prior to beginning his writing career, he worked at Amnesty International and in the US Congress.
Zahir Janmohamed
Books by Zahir
The Permitted Hours: Muslim Life in India’s Hindu Laboratory
A work of personal reportage, The Permitted Hours takes as its starting point the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom that signaled Modi’s political assent, and to which Zahir bore first-hand witness. The violence and trauma of that experience never left him; indeed, it led him back to Gujarat where between 2011 and 2018 he based himself in Ahmedabad’s Muslim ghetto and reported on the ongoing effects of Modi’s fascist politics on India’s Muslims, and therefore on the very fabric of civil society and Indian democracy. A deeply personal, fiercely written and indelible story by a Muslim American about India, The Permitted Hours has direct repercussions for all of us witnessing the fascist rhetoric and actions threatening the foundations of our own democracy. It is also a searing and nuanced exploration of the insidious effects of trauma, and the long journey to dislodge that trauma, made even more challenging when the violence is ongoing.