Mujtaba Hussain was born at Pancholi, district Gulbarga in Karnataka state on July 15, 1936. He is a prolific and critically acclaimed Urdu journalist and satirist writer. Over the past forty years he has produced fifteen volumes of incisive, humorous journalism and creative writing. His work has been widely translated into English, Hindi and various other regional languages of India. In 2007, he received a Padma Shree, for his contributions to Urdu literature. He lives in Hyderabad.