Writer Daniyal Mueenuddin is a study in contrasts. He divides his time between New York and a sprawling farm in a remote corner of Pakistan’s south Punjab. His day begins at the crack of dawn when he calls in the munshis who manage the farm —and issues precise instructions for the day. Then, he retreats to the privacy of his study and works on his short stories till the early afternoon when it’s back to focusing on the farm.

The results of his toil on the soil can be seen in glasshouses bursting with vegetables like cucumbers, bell peppers and chillies, which get to market six weeks before products grown in the open air. Says Mueenuddin: “There’s a lot of money to be made in glasshouses. But it’s expensive and you can lose a lot if something goes wrong.”

Away from the soil, his solitary labours have yielded a crop of short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, for which he received a six-figure advance from his American publishers and heaps of praise from reviewers. He’s been hailed as the “next Jhumpa Lahiri” for the gentle, non-judgemental tales that turn the lens on mouldering feudal lords and struggling lower classes, hoping against hope to strike it rich.

Mueenuddin, 45, is a product of our global era in more ways than one. His mother’s American and his father Pakistani and he has spent his life criss-crossing between the two lands. He studied in Pakistan till he was 13 and then headed off to prep school in the US that was followed by four years as an undergraduate at Dartmouth. One grandmother is Norwegian and he spent a year there as a Fulbright scholar (his wife’s also Norwegian and Arabic scholar who — most importantly— enjoys life on the farm in rural Pakistan).

Mueenuddin at the Jaipur Literature Festival

In his early 20s, he returned to Pakistan and was told by his father the farm was his but that he would have to “fight for it”. That meant battling an ex-munshi who’d taken over large tracts of the family land and transferred it to his own name. The one-time munshi had turned into a powerful figure in the district and had also become a politician. Says Mueenuddin: “Luckily for me, he died and his son was a bit of a wimp.” (One of his short stories, Provide, Provide, tells the tale of a munshi who becomes a powerful landlord and politician).

After years of struggle, Mueenuddin recovered a big chunk of the land and hired competent people to run it. His technique, he says, is simple: He pays the munshis lots of money to keep them honest but they’re fired for the slightest fiddling. “I say to them, ‘you’re replaceable’. It’s the only way to run it. They’ve all straightened out and the most obvious loot, maar has stopped,” says the author, who often breaks into Urdu in conversation.

But Mueenuddin wasn’t ready to settle permanently on the farm. He returned to the US (where his mother lives) to study at the prestigious Yale Law School. That was followed by a two-year, high-pressure spell at a New York law firm where he learned the importance of being absolutely precise. “Any ambiguities have to be intentional — and you have to conceal them. It also taught me how to get a job done quickly. You can’t afford to have writer’s block,” he says.

Most people might have been satisfied with being a lawyer and a successful farmer but Mueenuddin’s greatest ambition was to be a writer. He has always written poems but says modestly: “Only my mother likes them.” Nevertheless, that hasn’t deterred him. “My big dream was to be a poet. They’re the kings.”

On the farm, he churned out reams of poetry. “It kept me sane. I don’t have people I can talk to there. This gave me a life,” he says. Along the way, he started writing short stories and got himself a literary agent. During an Egyptian holiday, he was woken by his agent who said a bidding war for his stories had yielded a six-figure advance. “I don’t think I got back to sleep that night,” he says with a grin. The book has now been sold in eight countries and translated into five languages.

It’s not tough to identify strands of Mueenuddin’s own life in his stories. Is the gentle feudal lord K.K. Harouni someone like his own father? And are there parallels between Mueenuddin’s life and the story (Our Lady of Paris) of Sohail Harouni, who studied at Yale, has an American girlfriend and has promised to return to Pakistan to look after the family business? In the story, Sohail’s mother describes him as, “gentle, not weak, soft. He gets by on intelligence, that’s why he’s still successful.”

It goes without saying that one slender volume of short stories does not create a new star on the literary firmament. But Mueenuddin’s already looking forward to the future. He has written about 25 short stories in total and some are set in the US — his agent felt they wouldn’t fit into this volume. Now he’s working on these stories and also on a full-length novel. “I already know the ending,” he says confidently.

But for the time being, he’s enjoying the sudden attention. He read extracts from his book at the recent Jaipur Literary Festival and he loved meeting other writers. Says Mueenuddin: “Writers are the best people in the world. I lived in complete isolation till this happened. Now I get invited to all sorts of parties. It’s great.”