Saturday, February 2, 2008

chetan bhagat

Chetan grew up in Delhi most of his life and attended The Army Public School. He from IIT Delhi in 1995 and IIM Ahmedabad in 1997. Post IIM, he has been working in an investment bank in Hong Kong for the last seven years.
His first novel, "Five Point Someone" (FPS), came out in May 2004. It has continued to top the Indian bestseller lists ever since - over seventy weeks after its release. FPS won Chetan the Society Young Achiever's award in 2004 and the Publisher's recognition award in 2005. The heartwarming, fast-paced tale of three IITians has enjoyed cult popularity and has even been prescribed as course reading across various Indian universities and schools.
'one night @ the call center' is his second novel. It is already a bestseller of 2005 before release, based on advance orders alone.
Apart from writing, the author has a keen interest in Yoga.

jhumpa lahiri


Jhumpa Lahiri was born 1967 in London, England, and raised in Rhode Island. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in English literature, and of Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was translated into twenty-nine languages and became a bestseller both in the United States and abroad. In addition to the Pulitzer, it received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award, and a nomination for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Lahiri was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. The Namesake is Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel. She lives in New York with her husband and son.

anita desai


Indian novelist and short story writer, especially noted for her sensitive portrayal of the inner life of her female characters. Several of Desai's novels explore tensions between family members and the alienation of middle-class women. In her later novels Desai has dealt with such themes as German anti-Semitism, the demise of traditions, and Western stereotypical views of India.

As a novelist Desai made her debut in 1963 with The Peacock. She had started to write short stories regularly before her marriage. The Peacock was published in Britain by Peter Owen, a publisher specializing in literature of the British Commonwealth and continental Europe. In was followed by Voices of the City (1965), a story about three siblings, Amla, Nirode, and Monisha, and their different ways of life in Calcutta. Amla sees the city as a monster, Nirode sacrifices everything for her career, and Monisha cannot bear her stifling existence in the household of a wealthy old Calcutta family . Fire on the Mountain (1977), set in Kasuli, a hill station, focused on three women and their complex experiences in life.


Selected works:
The Peacock, 1963
Voices in the City, 1965
Bye-Bye, Blackbird, 1971
The Peacock Garden, 1974
Where Shall We Go This Summer?, 1975
Cat on a Houseboat, 1976
Fire on the Mountain, 1977
Games at Twilight and Other Stories, 1978
Clear Light of Day, 1980
Village by the Sea, 1982
In Custody, 1984 - film 1993, dir. by Ismail Merchant, starring Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, screenplay by Anita Desai
Baumgartner's Bombay, 1988
Journey to Ithaca, 1996
Fasting, Feasting, 1999
Diamond Dust, 2000
The Zigzag Way: A Novel, 2004

kiran desai

Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, she lived in Delhi until she was 14, then spent a year in England, before her family moved to the USA. She completed her schooling in Massachusetts before attending Bennington College; Hollins University and Columbia University, where she studied creative writing, taking two years off to write Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.
Kiran Desai was born in India in 1971, she lived in Delhi until she was 14, then spent a year in England, before her family moved to the USA. She completed her schooling in Massachusetts before attending Bennington College; Hollins University and Columbia University, where she studied creative writing, taking two years off to write Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. Her mother is Anita Desai, author of many books, three of which have been short listed for the Booker Prize (Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999). Anita Desai currently teaches writing at MIT.
She first came to literary attention in 1997 when she was published in the New Yorker and in Mirrorwork, an anthology of 50 years of Indian writing edited by Salman Rushdie - Strange Happenings in the Guava Orchard was the closing piece. In 1998, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which had taken four years to write, was published to good reviews.

arundhati roy

Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, writer and activist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.
Roy first attracted attention when she criticised Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan Devi, charging Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning.

The God of Small Things, cover
Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, in 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Ayemenem or Aymanam. The book received the 1997 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and was listed as one of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year for 1997.The book reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. She received half a million pounds as an advance, and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries.
The God of Small Things received good reviews including one from John Updike in The New Yorker However, Carmen Callil chair of the Booker judges panel in 1996, called The God of Small Things "an execrable book" and said it should never have reached the shortlist.
Roy wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones (1989) and Electric Moon (1992) and a television serial The Banyan Tree. She also wrote the documentary DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy (2002)