Before becoming a writer, publisher, producer, scriptwriter and mentor to new talent, S. Hussain Zaidi was a journalist for over twenty years. He started his career with the Asian Age and the Indian Express before moving on to Mid-Day and Mumbai Mirror as editor (investigations). He bid adieu to journalism in 2016.
His first book, Black Friday, was made into a critically acclaimed film by director Anurag Kashyap. His documentation of the Mumbai mafia in books such as Dongri to Dubai, Mafia Queens of Mumbai, My Name Is Abu Salem and Byculla to Bangkok are considered some of the finest pieces of investigative journalism. His mastery over terrorism-related research is reflected in Black Friday, Headley and I and Mumbai Avengers.Mumbai Avengers was the first fiction title that Zaidi experimented with. The book was adapted into a Hindi film, Phantom, starring Saif Ali Khan and Katrina Kaif and directed by Kabir Khan.
Zaidi was also associate producer for Terror in Mumbai, a documentary film, along with Dan Reed for HBO, based on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The movie was widely acclaimed and won a series of awards. While Class of ’83, based on his book of the same name, produced by Shah Rukh Khan, is already streaming on Netflix, a web series based on Dongri to Dubai being produced by Farhan Akhtar is one of the top series of 2024 on Amazon Prime Video currently being shot for second season.
Zaidi has just released the sequel for his best selling book – Dubai to Karachi and is currently working on Mafia Queens of India.
Zaidi returns with his most ambitious book yet, represented by A Suitable Agency. A timely work of investigative nonfiction that is filled with groundbreaking facts and nail-biting tension, The Gospel of Gangsters is not only a searing exploration of Mumbai on the precipice of gangland chaos, but also a deep-dive into the unwritten tenets by which the Mumbai underworld operates.