Alka Saraogi

Alka Saraogi is a Hindi author from Calcutta belonging to the Marwari diaspora. Her first novel Kalikatha Via Bypass won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2001. She is the youngest Hindi writer ever to win the award. She is the recipient of the K.K. Birla Foundation Award, Indu Sharma Katha International Award, Kalinga Litfest Award, Valley of Words Award, Stree Shakti Award and Fakir Mohan Senapati Award. She was knighted ‘Cavaliere’ by the government of Italy.

She has published nine novels and two collections of short stories. Saraogi has been translated into many of India’s regional languages as well as European languages such as German, Italian, Spanish and French. Her works weave seamlessly between the present and the past and explore the ideas of identity, displacement and the reclamation of the self in a historical perspective. There is a multilayered structure to her works that blends local tales and myths with the most modern techniques of storytelling. Experimentation with ‘form’ features prominently in each of her novels