Muhammad Khalid Akhtar (1920–2002) was born in Allahbad Tehsil of the state of Bahawalpur. He studied in Bahawalpur and Lahore and in 1946 went to England for his postgraduate training in electrical engineering. He worked as an engineer in Karachi in the 1940s and 1950s.
His short story "Khoya hua ufaq" was written in 1943 and published in Sawaira by Saadat Hasan Manto in 1953. From the 1950s onward, his short stories, essays, reviews, parodies, and travelogues were published in journals like Funoon, Sawaira, Adab-i-Latif and Afkaar. In the 1990s, he wrote mostly reviews and travelogues. His last piece of writing, travel notes on Greece, written in late 1999, was published in Tehrir.
His books include Bees sau giyarah (1950 and reprinted in 1999), Chakiwara mein wisaal (1964), and Khoya hua ufaq (collection of stories, sketches, satirical essays, the winner of the Adamjee Award in 1967), as well as Alice jehan-i-hairat mein and Aaienay kay paar (1980, Urdu translations of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass), Do safar (1984, travelogue), Chacha Abdul Baqi (1985, stories), Makateeb-i-Khizr (1989, humorous letters), Yatra (1990, travelogue, and winner of the Baba-e-Urdu Award), Ibn-i-Jubair ka safar (1994, history, travelogue), and Laltain aur doosri kahaniyan (1997, stories and a novella). He was awarded the Aalmi Farogh-e Urdu Award for lifetime achievement by Majlis Farogh-e-Adab, Doha