Category Archive: Sahitya Akademi Award

Rahman Abbas novels picked for Penguin Random House Vintage collection

Two novels by Rahman Abbas, a Sahitya Akademi award winning novelist in Urdu, have been picked by Penguin Random House for their Vintage imprint, which is known to publish “the world’s most thought provoking and powerful books”. Both the novels are  acclaimed. Rohzin won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2018 and Khuda Ke Saaye Mein Aankh Micholi was awarded the Maharashtra State Akademi Award in 2011.

Rahman Abbas said, “I have lost many things in my life due to my decision to write my novels, exactly as I wanted to write them but fortunately, I have regained a lot without compromising on my writing. The news that my two novels would be published by Penguin-Random House in English has pleased me beyond words. It’s like a dream coming true before my eyes. I’m very thankful to Zafar Anjum of Kitaab and Jayapriya Vasudevan of Jacaranda for having made it possible.”

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How Ruskin Bond reveals his love for India: “All I really wanted was my little room back again”

Book Review by Richa Mohan

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Title: Lone Fox Dancing, My Autobiography

Author: Ruskin Bond

Publisher and date of publication: Speaking Tiger, 2017

Ruskin Bond is an award-winning author. He won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957, for his very first novel, The Room on the Roof. Since then he has been honoured with various awards including the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India in 1993, the Padma Shri in 1999, and the Delhi government’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 2014. In fact, his autobiography, Lone Fox Dancing, won the 2017 Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize.

So how do you review the work of a master? Actually, you don’t. You simply flow with the magic of the master weaver of tales and feel lucky that you had a chance to, once again, experience the power of beautiful storytelling.

It is said greatness is born of suffering, and the story in the book is testament of that. You are transported to a simpler time and life, such that you actually end up yearning for them — for the days when pen and paper, and tales in the night, were an everyday reality.

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The Assassination of Indira Gandhi: Upamanyu Chatterjee Plunges into Darkness, Mingles Facts and Fiction with Wry Humour

Book Review by Gracy Samjetsabam

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Title: The Assassination of Indira Gandhi

Author: Upamanyu Chatterjee

Publisher: Speaking Tiger, 2019

 

The Assassination of Indira Gandhi (2019) is a collection of short stories on different themes and motifs by acclaimed writer Upamanyu Chatterjee. Winner of the prestigious Indian Sahitya Akademi Award and the French Officier des Arts et des Lettres, his debut novel, English August: An Indian Story, was  made into a highly successful film.

The title of his new book, The Assassination of Indira Gandhi, is at once striking, for it echoes a dark chapter in 20th  century history, the assassination of one of India’s most iconic prime ministers and the social tensions that followed within the country. The title aptly sets the tone for the stories that are a tour de force of the trials and tribulations of modern India’s journey. This assortment of twelve short stories covers diverse themes and settings, each one of them, delving into the issues that strike at the heart of  the emerging idea of India. 

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