Pakkis

Khalid Hussain is a Norwegian-Pakistani writer and film producer. Hussain was born in 1969 in Pakistan, and moved to Norway without his parents in 1975. He came to attention after writing the book Pakkis in 1986 when he was 16 years old.

Drawing upon his own life experiences, Hussain voiced in Pakkis the unique challenges of many young immigrants in Norway. In this novel, we follow the story of the teenager Sajjad as he tries to shape his own identity in the space between the Pakistani culture of his parents and the Norwegian culture of his peers. The novel sold over 60,000 copies. A second edition of Pakkis in 2005 attests to the continued need to tell the story of young immigrant experiences.

Pakkis is translated by Ingeborg Kongslien and Claudia Berguson.