Featured Interview With Hassaan Usmani
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I belong to the vibrant city of Lahore, Pakistan. This is the place where I am living since I was born. I grew up as a lonely child with not much friends. That experience made me an introvert but gave me the chance to develop inside me some powerful self-reflection and deep thought about myself and life in general.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was always the kind of child who would get lost inside a library. Not because I didn't know the way outside but because getting lost there felt so good. It seemed like every shelf was an entire world of its own and puts your imagination at work and suddenly you want to read all the books on every shelf there. Just the process of sifting through titles gave my imagination a sort of climax or high as we can call it. I attempted to write my first book when I was in fifth grade. I soon realized that book-writing was much more complex than I thought it was. So I peft it in the middle and kept attempting time and again to write a book until the time I actually completed one.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite author is Paulo Coelho, but he is not an inspiration. To be honest, I do not think that any writer inspires me because I am simply not a fan of story telling. Story telling makes us think that our actual life is also a story which is all about us. I want to write a book which mirrors life as it is and helps us guide through life. It should not tell us what is real and what not. So whatever my book is, it is not a traditional story. It is my attempt to describe life as it is. All its complexities as they are.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book "A Choice of Fate" is about a person who is given the choice to choose whatever life he/she wants to live. They have a free choice to choose each and every thing in their life. They get control over everything. And then the real weighty complexities in life grip him and he/she is unable to do anything. They just end up inside a void with nowhere to go.