The Haunting of Hajji Hotak: : Jamil Jan Kochai: Bloomsbury Publishing

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak

Description

A finalist for the National Book Award - a luminous new collection of stories from a young writer with 'a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers' (New York Times)

**FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION**
**NAMED A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022 BY THE NEW YORKER AND THE ATLANTIC**

PEN/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In these arresting stories verging on both comedy and tragedy, often starring young characters whose bravado is matched by their tenderness.

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement - and one that speaks to the immediate political landscape we reckon with today.

'An endlessly inventive and moving collection from a thrilling and capacious young talent' Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins.

'Kochai's short fiction defies expectations – readers' expectations of what a story should look like, and the story of a nation often told reductively and exclusively through media headlines' Guardian

Product details

Published	04 Nov 2025
Format	Paperback
Edition	1st
Extent	288
ISBN	9781526664761
Imprint	Bloomsbury Publishing
Dimensions	198 x 129 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Jamil Jan Kochai

Jamil Jan Kochai was born in Pakistan and grew up…

Employing elements of the surreal, the absurd, and the magical, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak asks what war does to those who see it firsthand - and how this witnessing reverberates to their descendants

ATLANTIC, Books of the Year 2022
Shortlisted for the National Book Award, Kochai's inventive début story collection details the toll that decades of war and the struggles of immigration have taken on Afghans and the Afghan diaspora in the United States

NEW YORKER, Books of the Year 2022
[Kochai's] short fiction defies expectations – readers' expectations of what a story should look like, and the story of a nation often told reductively and exclusively through media headlines

GUARDIAN
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories is an endlessly inventive and moving collection, the work of a thrilling and capacious young talent. These stories surprise and charm and haunt in equal measure, while challenging the world as we think we know it. Jamil Jan Kochai is the real deal

JESS WALTER, author of Beautiful Ruins
Jamil Jan Kochai is a once-in-a-generation talent

KARAN MAHAJAN, author of The Association of Small Bombs
Kochai has a gift for knowing what makes the engine of a story turn over and go, what formal choices might deliver a narrative in such a way as to coax a reader to endure a set of experiences that, whatever their frequent delights - and the stories are uncommonly full of them - are rooted in sorrow, loss, and rage

NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS