LE PORTRAIT MAGAZINE MARCH-SEPTEMBER ISSUE | Page 43

Nadim Safdar wrote his debut novel in a shed in his garden, and still
practises dentistry part-time. Photograph: Karen Robinson for the
Observer
Dentist Nadim Safdar’s debut is a ‘super-timely’ novel about the
radicalisation of a British Muslim
In the early hours of 11 November, Akram Khan, a former British
soldier, leaves his wife and West Midlands home for the final time. His
aim is simple: to attain martyrdom by detonating a bomb at a
Remembrance Day parade. But while there is plenty of grit in 44-yearold Nadim Safdar’s layered, involving debut, it is not quite as bleak as
that might sound. “It’s about love; it’s not about suicide bombers,”
Safdar stresses: love of God, of Britain, and the love between friends.
Safdar grew up in Stourbridge, a stone’s throw from Cradley Heath, the
town at the centre of his novel. His Pakistani parents came to the UK in
the 1960s; he was one of six children, and was more interested in boxing
than books until he discovered poetry in his teens. But literature took a
back seat, of necessity, when he had to make a living: “I thought: ‘This
is what I should be doing,’” he says, “and I’ve had a stab at writing, but
you quickly fall back into profession, mortgage, family…”
After studying dentistry at Newcastle University, Safdar “knocked about
a bit” – something that also involved reading medicine at Wolfson
College, Cambridge for a year – before moving to London and,
eventually, set up his own dental practice in Harley Street. In 2010 he
decided to sell up, build a writing shed in his Clapham garden, and enrol
on a “very, very helpful” creative writing MA at Birkbeck.
I was incredibly jammy. It was very, very nice
Safdar’s publication record at that point ran to a 1993 paper on fractured
mandibles. He began two novels but scrapped both halfway, and it was
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