Kochai, Jamil Jan

Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for debut novel, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He was born in an Afghan refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, but he originally hails from Logar, Afghanistan. His short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Ploughshares, and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2018. In The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories (Viking), Kochai ​breathes life into his contemporary Afghan characters, moving between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. In “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain,” a young man’s video game experience turns into a surreal exploration of his father’s memories of war and occupation. Set in Kabul, “Return to Sender” follows two married doctors driven by guilt to leave the U.S. and care for their fellow Afghans. And in the title story we learn of a man codenamed Hajji, from the perspective of a government surveillance worker who becomes entrenched in the immigrant’s family life. The collection offers a moving exploration of characters grappling with the ghosts of war and displacement.