What writers can learn from Amer Anwar

Remembering the crime novelist and his contagious enthusiasm for his work. Plus, come and see me at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Jul 31, 2025

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A couple of days ago I was tagged in a kind Instagram post about my book – but the caption referred to one of my interviewees as ‘the late Amer Anwar’. I didn’t know Amer had died.

Amer, for those who don’t know, was a British crime writer who published two novels. He was an alumnus of the same creative-writing MA that I did, at Birkbeck, University of London. That’s where I came across him:

Toby Litt

invited him to speak to my cohort. Soon afterwards, I asked him to be a guest on the In Writing podcast.

According to this obituary, Amer died in February this year after a short illness. He was 55 years old and he was a dad. I didn’t know him well – I met him in person only once, when I interviewed him in 2021. We last exchanged emails almost a year ago. Still, I feel very sad to hear that he is gone. I liked him very much – he was so easy to like. I want to share a bit with you about what I learnt from him.

Amer invited me to interview him at his family home. It was near Hanger Lane, once voted Britain’s scariest roundabout and known as ‘Malfunction Junction’; he told me that he had grown up there, and had to start each of his driving lessons by going over the terrifying roundabout.

He was very hospitable and kind. Rushing to get there, I had skipped breakfast; he made me tea and dug around in the kitchen cupboard for Jaffa Cakes.

We did the interview in a room where almost every inch of wall space was covered in neat bookshelves. Amer had so many books that he had to store them two-deep, and had used an app called LibraryThing to create a catalogue. ‘It isn't quite Dewey Decimal, but it’s my own little system, so I can look it up and I know exactly where a book is,’ he said.

He was a very enthusiastic person, funny and unpretentious (he repeatedly referred to early drafts of his novel as ‘pants’). He wasn’t hugely high-profile as a writer, but I knew my listeners would warm to him as I had, and that they’d want to hear his story – because it was so different, and it was inspiring.

I don’t read much crime. His novels were not my usual kind of thing: they were full of brutal fight sequences and bad guys hiding cocaine in warehouses. What made them unusual when he wrote them (though I think this is gradually changing) was that they were set in Southall, a suburb of west London that’s sometimes known as Little India. His gangsters, all British Asians, spoke English peppered with Punjabi swearing. I loved that.

The other thing I found wonderful about Amer was what he’d faced and overcome to complete and publish those novels. He seemed to me a very open-hearted man, but for many reasons he’d had to be incredibly persistent, thick-skinned and resourceful. When things went wrong, he kept picking himself up and trying again.

When he was writing his debut novel, he entered the first chapter of it for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger award, and won, which helped him sign with the agent Jane Gregory. But when she submitted his complete manuscript to publishers – at which point Amer had already been working on it for eight years, around his day job and parenting – it was rejected everywhere. He told me he was heartbroken.

Here’s a passage from my book, taken from my conversation with him, about what he did next:

I decided to self-publish, and I wanted to give it the best possible chance. I spent six months on social media watching how the big publishers launch their books. I designed adverts and little posts for Twitter and Facebook. I took photographs in Southall and designed my own cover. I even set up a fake publisher – there’s a logo on the spine, so that when it’s on a bookshelf, it looks legit, and when you open it up, it’s got a copyright page. I learnt how to typeset the book, got an ISBN number, did the barcode myself – it all looks very professional. One of my old bosses has a print company and he printed my proof copies for free. I saw that publishers would send bloggers their books to generate buzz, so I did the same. I wrote my own press release, pretending to be my publicist. I had email addresses and signatures that said ‘publicity department’.
I went to every bookshop that I could get to. I’d show the manager a copy of my book and they would order a few. I realised that cities like Birmingham, Leicester and Coventry also have big Asian communities, so I emailed bookshops there to see if they’d be interested in stocking a British Asian thriller. It started to be sold around the country, and I started to get Amazon reviews and emails from readers. One of the reviews said, ‘I don’t think I’m the target audience for this book, because I’m white, female, over forty and Scottish – but I absolutely loved it.’ I thought, ‘Yes! That’s exactly who I want to enjoy the book.’
I’d go to festivals and events and tout the book around, and eventually I was introduced to Sharmaine Lovegrove, who had just set up Dialogue Books with Little, Brown. I told her about my book, and I sent it to her on a Thursday. On Monday, I got a phone call: ‘Could you come in for a meeting?’
Dialogue eventually republished it, and The Times and The Guardian listed it as one of their thrillers of the year. It was a phenomenal feeling.

This is the abridged version of Amer’s story – there’s a longer version on the podcast. I was so impressed by the ‘give it a shot’-ness of it. He had been so disappointed by the response from traditional publishers, but he still believed there were readers out there who would love his work. He went out and found them. He worked hard for every success he achieved, and I’m so glad he had that success.

When I met him in 2021, he was planning his third book, but I don’t know whether he finished writing it. He had a full-time job – which wasn’t writing – and financial responsibilities. I feel certain that if Amer had lived to an old age, he would have written many more books regardless of whether they were published, because crime writing was his passion.

That’s what I think stuck with me from meeting Amer, and why I feel sad about his death even though we didn’t know each other well: he took such joy in writing. He found it hard (as we all do), but he seemed so happy just to be doing it.

I don’t know how to find his family to send my condolences, but if they come across this, I want them to know I’m thinking of them. If you would like to buy Amer’s books, I imagine his royalties will now go to his next of kin, which might be helpful. They are Brothers In Blood and Stone Cold Trouble.

You can listen to my conversation with Amer here, or on any podcast platform.

In Writing with Hattie Crisell

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