Omar Shahid Hamid

Omar Shahid Hamid has been a police officer for 20 years. Now a deputy inspector general, As part of Sindh Police’s counterterrorism department, Omar has survived an ambush by gangsters and a false case against him made by colleagues. After barely escaping a bombing in 2010 of his offices by the Taliban, he took a five-year sabbatical in 2011 to study in the UK and write books. He has an MS in Criminal Justice Policy (LSE), an LLM (UCL), and an LLB (University of Kent). In 2016, he returned to active duty in counterterrorism in Pakistan. He has been widely quoted and featured in publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, Le Monde, Reuters, CNN, and BBC.

His first book, The Prisoner (2013, also available in French and German editions), was longlisted for the DSC South Asia Literature Prize and is being adapted for a feature film. He won the Karachi Literature Festival Fiction Prize in 2017 for The Spinner's Tale (2015) and again in 2018 for The Party Worker (2017). The Spinner's Tale also won the Italy Reads Pakistan Award at the Karachi Literature Festival in 2017 and has been translated into Italian and German. The Fix (2019) explored the arcane world of cricket match-fixing. Betrayal is his fifth novel.