Amit Chaudhuri is the author of seven novels, including, most recently, Friend of My Youth, as well as a work of non-fiction, Calcutta, and collections of short stories, poetry, essays, and a critical study of D. H. Lawrence’s poetry. He has received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Encore Prize, the LA Times Book Prize, and the Sahitya Akademi Award, among other accolades. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia and Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University. Alongside this, he is an admired singer in the North Indian classical tradition and a composer and performer in a celebrated project that brings together the raga, blues and jazz with a variety of other musical traditions. He received the Sangeet Samman from the government of West Bengal. Chaudhuri is regularly featured on radio and TV; his version of ‘Summertime’ was featured on the BBC 4 documentary, Gershwin’s Summertime: the Song that Conquered the World.
Maneka Gandhi is an Indian politician, animal rights activist, and environmentalist. She served as a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, and is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Giles Tillotson is well known as a writer and lecturer on Indian history and
architecture. He taught at the University of London from 1990 to 2004, since
when he has been living in Gurgaon, near Delhi. His earlier books include
Mughal India, Jaipur Nama and Taj Mahal, all published by Penguin. This
is his fi rst work of fi ction.
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 Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination (1996); Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India (2005); Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture (2005), Gender, Sex and the City: Urdu Rekhti Poetry in India 1780–1870 (2012); Dancing with the Nation: Courtesans in Bombay Cinema (2017). Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared in 2020.
She is the author of over sixty articles on British and Indian literature, 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). 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.
Giles Tillotson writes and lectures on a wide range of Indian art and architecture, from the sultanate and Rajput period to the colonial and modern eras. He taught at the University of London from 1990 to 2004, since when he has been living in India, working as an author and curator, and as a consultant to museum trusts.
Delhi Darshan completes Giles Tillotson’s Golden Triangle trilogy, following his critically acclaimed books Jaipur Nama and Taj Mahal, both published by Penguin India.
NASEERUDDIN SHAH is an iconic stage
and film actor who has won major
national and international awards.
He was awarded the Padma Bhushan
in 2008.
Sandhya Mulchandani has spent considerable time with the print media. She is the author and researcher of several projects and books that explore eroticism in Hindu mythologies as well as in ancient and medieval literature. She’s the author of The Indian Man, Kama Sutra for Women, which has been translated into several languages, Love and Lust, The Five Arrows of Kama, Mudupalani’s Radhika Santswanam, besides being featured in several documentaries. Interested in Hindu philosophy, mythology and music, she lives in Delhi.
