Devin Leonard interviews novelist Mohsin Hamid on his Latest novel and McKinsey past in Bloomberg Businessweek
You had a successful career in business before you published your first novel. How did you end up as a writer?
I stumbled into consulting. I didn’t know how you could make a living trying to write fiction. So I went to law school and had this enormous debt, so I interviewed for a job at McKinsey.
What did your colleagues at McKinsey think when you published Moth Smoke in 2000?
I was working on it in the evenings and on weekends. People were quite excited and supportive. I pitched this notion of working nine months a year and writing three. And I did that for a few years at McKinsey.
Why did you go back to Pakistan to be a writer?
I always thought I was going to wind up in Pakistan. I was afraid that if I kept walking down the path at McKinsey, that I would become a partner and start earning a lot of money and price myself out of my own dream.
