Archives: Authors

Indrajit Hazra is the author of the novels The Burnt Forehead of Max Saul and The Garden of Earthly Delights, both of which have also been published in French. He is a journalist with the Hindustan Times, where he also writes the popular weekly column Red Herring.

Zai Whitaker is the managing trustee of the zoo and conservation centre, the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology, which she co-founded in 1976. Her interest in wildlife and conservation began in childhood, as she grew up in a family of naturalists, including the ‘Birdman of India’, Salim Ali. She has written twenty books, including Andamans Boy, Kali and the Rat Snake and the latest, Termite Fry.
She has also taught English at a school in Kodaikanal and has been the principal of two schools. Apart from awards for her writing, she has also received the Peter Scott Award for Conservation.
Zai lives in Chennai with her son Nikhil, who is the curator of the Croc Bank.

Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been General President of the Indian History Congress. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and holds an Hon D.Lit. each from Calcutta University, Oxford University and the University of Chicago. She is an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and SOAS, London. In 2008 Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as history that are not covered by the Nobel Prize.

Her other publications include Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Ancient Indian Social History, History and Beyond, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History, Sakuntala, Cultural Pasts, The Past as Present, Indian Cultures as Heritage, Gazing Eastwards: Of Buddhist Monks and Revolutionaries in China as well as a children’s book, Indian Tales.

Ruth Vanita (Author)
Ruth Vanita taught at Delhi University for twenty years and is now professor at the University of Montana. She was founding co-editor of Manushi, 1978-90. She is the author of several books, including Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriages in Modern India (2005); Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India 1780-1870 (2012); and Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2017). She is the co-editor of Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, and has translated many works of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu to English, most notably Chocolate: Stories on Male-Male Desire by Pandey Bechan Sharma ‘Ugra’ (2008). This is her first work of fiction. She divides her time between Missoula and Gurgaon.

Saleem Kidwai (Author)
Saleem Kidwai is a historian and independent scholar, who taught at Ramjas College, Delhi University, for twenty years. He has published several academic essays on medieval and modern India, and translated several works, including Song Sung True: A Memoir by Malka Pukhraj and a collection of Syed Rafiq Hussain’s short stories, The Mirror of Wonders. Apart from the author herself, he is the only person to have translated the novels of Qurratulain Hyder, Chandni Begum and Ship of Sorrow.