Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, she grew up between Syria and Pakistan. She graduated from Columbia University, specialising in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and later completed a master's degree in Government and Politics of South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She is the author of both fiction and non-fiction, through which she pursues her political activism. Her books include Songs of Blood and Sword: A Daughter's Memoir (Nation Books, 2010), a personal memoir recounting the life and assassination of her father, and the novel The Runaways (Viking, 2018), which explores the radicalisation of three young Muslims. She has also published Los nuevos reyes del mundo: Bollywood, Dizi, y K-Pop (Herder Editorial, 2025), analysing the emergence of global pop culture phenomena originating in Asia, and The Hour of the Wolf (Daunt Books Publishing, 2026), a memoir about grief, death and love. Bhutto wrote a weekly column for two years for Jang, Pakistan's largest Urdu-language newspaper, and its English-language sister publication, The News International. She reported from Lebanon during the Israeli invasion and the Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, from Iran in January 2007 and from Cuba in April 2008. She regularly contributes to international publications including New Statesman, The Daily Beast, The Guardian and The Caravan Magazine.