Shubnum: pronounced Shubb-numb
Shubnum Khan is a South African author and artist. Her latest novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, a literary gothic novel set in an Indian South African community of Durban is out with Penguin Random House (US), Oneworld Publications (UK) and PanMacmillan (SA). It is a USA Today bestseller, a New York Times Editor's Choice, an NPR's Best Books of 2024 and made Brittle Paper's list of Notable African Books. It is the winner of The Sunday Times Fiction Prize, The University of Johannesburg Main Prize and The HSS Award for Best Novel, it has been shortlisted for The Book Lounge Book of the Year and The South African Book Awards and long listed for the Dublin Literary Award. It has been translated into Italian and Ukranian.
Shubnum has a Media Studies degree and a Masters in English and briefly worked in academia teaching courses in English and Media Studies. She was also a copywriter at an advertising agency, taught English and Science at a school in a village in the Himalayas and wrote stories about culture and art for magazines and newspapers. As an artist she began as a cartoonist, then a book cover illustrator and now she takes private art commissions. However, it is her love for writing that is ultimately her calling; her debut novel, Onion Tears was published in South Africa in 2011, a book of travel essays, How I Accidentally Became a Global Stock Photo was published in South Africa & India in 2021 and her most recent novel, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years was published worldwide in 2024.
She is always interested in stories about connection between human beings, the experience of womanhood, the forming of identities including the Indian, Muslim, South African and single experience, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, the process of grief, the creation of memory, and the pursuit of hope.
She is a writing fellow at Writers OMI in New York, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and she is an Octavia Butler Fellow at Jack Jones Literary Arts. She was a finalist for the Miles Moreland Writing Scholarship for African Writers and selected as a Mellon Fellow at Stellenbosch University. She is a board member at Imbiza Journal for African Writing and a mentor at Led By Foundation which focuses on developing Muslim girls' education in India. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, HuffPost, O the Oprah Magazine, The Sunday Times, New Contrast, and Saraba Magazine.
When she is not travelling she lives in Durban, where the warmest waters meet the bluest skies.
