Perumal Murugan was born into a family of farmers near the temple city of Tiruchengode, India in 1966. His family belongs to the Gounder community, the largest agrarian caste in the Kongu Nadu region. As his father was not able to feed the family by agricultural labor alone, Murugan worked
Pankaj Mishra was born in the northern Indian town of Jhansi in 1969. After studying commerce at the University of Allahabad, he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He began to write reviews for newspapers such as »The Indian
Award winning journalist and author, Pallavi Aiyar has reported from China, Europe and Indonesia. Her most recent book, »Punjabi Parmesan: Dispatches from a Europe in Crisis« (2013), presents a witty Asian perspective on contemporary Europe’s travails. Pallavi’s 2008, best selling, China-memoir, »Smoke and Mirrors« (2008), won the Vodafone-Crossword Popular award.
Omair Ahmad was born in Aligarh in 1974. Although literature was an important part of his family life, like many children from developing countries, his training was primarily in sciences. His father was a petroleum engineer and this led the family across India and then later to Saudi Arabia, where
Guest at the ilb 2003 O. V. Vijayan was born in Palakkad in the southern Indian state of Kerala in 1930. His father was a senior police officer in the Malabar special forces and he grew up in several barracks. Because of his weak health, he did not start school
Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta, India, in 1970. He studied English Literature at Oxford and Cambridge. Mukherjee’s first novel, »Past Continuous«, was published in India in 2008. The novel’s protagonist is a young man from Calcutta who travels to England to pursue his studies but leaves Oxford soon thereafter
Naveen Kishore born in 1953, is the publisher at Seagull Books, a publishing house that specializes in English translations of authors such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Bernhard, Imre Kertész, Yves Bonnefoy, Mo Yan, Mahasweta Devi, Peter Handke and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, among many others. Kishore was awarded the
Nayantara Sahgal was born in 1927 in Allahabad in northeast India. As the niece of Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, she grew up in the very centre of the struggle for independence. In 1944 her father, Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, died of his last imprisonment under British rule.
Namdeo Dhasal was born in a village near Poona, India, in 1947. As a member of the Dalits, the casteless (or ›untouchables‹) he grew up in direst poverty. Dhasal spent his childhood in Golpitha, a red-light district in Mumbai/Bombay, where his father worked for a butcher. Following the example of
Namita Gokhale (née Pant) was born in Lucknow, India in 1956 and grew up between New Delhi and Nainital, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Together with her husband Rajiv Gokhale she published the Mumbai-based film magazine »Super« in the late seventies. Gokhale’s debut novel, »Paro: Dreams of Passion« (1984)
The Indian writer Meena Kandasamy was born in Tamil Nadu in 1984. She received her doctorate in sociolinguistics from Anna University, Chennai.She wrote her first poems at the age of 17 and published her first volume of poetry in 2006 under the title »Touch«. Even here, she tackled the themes
Manil Suri was born in Bombay in 1959. His father worked as assistant music director and his mother was Indira Gandhi’s personal assistant for a year before the latter became Prime Minister. Suri began studying Mathematics at the University of Bombay and in 1983 completed a PhD at the Carnegie
