Archives: Authors

Ankit Chadha is a writer and storyteller, who specializes in weaving research-based narratives for performance in
the oral art of Urdu storytelling-Dastangoi. His works revolve around Sufi poetry and history education.

Sonia Shah is a science journalist and prize-winning author. Her writing on science, politics and human rights has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Scientific American and elsewhere. She has also been featured on CNN, RadioLab, Fresh Air and TED.com, where her talk, ‘Three Reasons We Still Haven’t Gotten Rid of Malaria’, has been viewed by over 10,00,000 people around the world.

Shudraka is regarded as one of the foremost Sanskrit dramatists. Although his work has been lauded for centuries, his real identity remains a mystery.

Padmini Rajappa studied Sanskrit under the private guidance of the teachers of the department of Sanskrit of the University of Poona and at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Earlier she had received a PhD degree in history from the University of Bombay. Padmini won the 2014 Sahitya Akademi award for translating Bana Bhatta’s Kadambari, a seventh-century Sanskrit prose work into English.

Vijay Joshi is emeritus fellow of Merton College, Oxford. His previous books on India (co-authored with I.M.D. Little) include India: Macroeconomics and Political Economy (1994), and India’s Economic Reforms (1996). He has, from time to time, held various official and business positions, including special adviser to the governor, Reserve Bank of India; officer on special duty, ministry of finance, Government of India; director, J.P. Morgan Indian Investment Trust; and consultant to several international organizations, including the World Bank. But the primary preoccupations of his working career have been teaching and research at the University of Oxford, in the fields of macroeconomics, international economics and development economics.

Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 at Allahabad and educated in England, at Harrow and Cambridge. In 1912, Nehru returned home to play a central role in India’s struggle for freedom from British colonial rule, and then, as prime minister of independent India for seventeen years, went on to shape the nation’s future as a modern, secular and democratic state. He died in office on 27 May 1964. Visionary and idealist, scholar and statesman of international stature, Nehru was also an outstanding writer. His three most renowned books—An Autobiography, Glimpses of World History and The Discovery of India—have acquired the status of classics, and are all published by Penguin.

Pinki Virani is an author, journalist, social campaigner, and human rights activist, who hails from Mumbai. She has written numerous nonfiction books such as Once Was Bombay, and Deaf Heaven. Virani obtained a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University. After returning to Mumbai, she worked as an editor for Mid Day. She tirelessly advocates for various human rights laws which promote human dignity. The success of all four of her books earned her a National Award. Virani is married to Shankkar Aiyar, a noted journalist and public intellectual. Together, they divide their time between Pune, Mumbai, and New Delhi.

Ismat Chughtai (1911–91) was Urdu’s most courageous and controversial woman writer in the twentieth century. She carved a niche for herself among her contemporaries of Urdu fiction writers—Rajinder Singh Bedi, Saadat Hasan Manto and Krishan Chander—by introducing areas of experience not explored before. Her work not only transformed the complexion of Urdu fiction but also brought about an attitudinal change in the assessment of literary works. Although a spirited member of the Progressive Writers’ Movement in India, she spoke vehemently against its orthodoxy and inflexibility. Often perceived as a feminist writer, Chughtai explored female sexuality while also exploring other dimensions of social and existential reality.

Tiruvalluvar was an ancient Tamil poet and philosopher best known for writing the Tirukkural, a collection of couplets on matters ranging from love to ethics.

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra was born in Lahore in 1947, he is the author of four books of poems, the most recent of which is The Transfiguring Places (1998), and one of translation, The Absent Traveller: Prakrit Love Poetry from the Gathasaptasathi (1991). His edited books include The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992) and An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (2003). He lives is Allahabad and Dehra Dun._x000D_

O.V. Vijayan (1930–2005) published five novels, eight collections of stories, seven collections of political essays and one volume of satire. His second novel, Gurusagaram, won the National Sahitya Akademi Award. The novel also won the Kerala State Akademi Award and the prestigious Vayalar Award. Vijayan worked as a political cartoonist for several leading newspapers like the Hindu, Statesman, Mathrubhumi (Malayalam) and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Vijayan translated some of his works into English. These include The Saga of Dharmapuri and After the Hanging and Other Stories, both published by Penguin.