At 13, Aslam published his first short story in Urdu in a Pakistani newspaper.[citation needed]
His 1993 debut novel, Season of the Rainbirds, set in rural Pakistan, won the Betty Trask and the Author's Club First Novel Award. Salman Rushdie described it as 'One of the most impressive first novels of the recent years'.
Aslam's third novel, The Wasted Vigil, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in September 2008.[4] It is set in Afghanistan. He travelled to Afghanistan during the writing of the book;[5] but had never visited the country before writing the first draft.[6] On 11 February 2011, it was short-listed for the Warwick Prize for Writing[7]
Aslam's fourth novel is The Blind Man's Garden (2013). It is set in Western Pakistan and Eastern Afghanistan and looks at the war on terror through the eyes of local, Islamist characters. It contains also a love story loosely based on the traditional Punjabi romance of Heer Ranjha.[citation needed] The Blind Man's Garden was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize 2014, which is given by the Royal Society of Literature.
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