Kiran Nagarkar

Kiran Nagarkar
2013 – at the bookfair of Leipzig, Germany
Born 1942
Mumbai, Maharashtra
Occupation Novelist dramatist screenwriter
Literary movement Indian
Website
kirannagarkar.com
Kiran Nagarkar, at Chandigarh Literatre Festival 2016, India
Kiran Nagarkar, at Chandigarh Literature Festival Nov.2016
Kiran Nagarkar addressing listeners at Melbourne

Kiran Nagarkar (born 1942) is an Indian novelist, playwright, film and drama critic and screenwriter both in Marathi and English, and is one of the most significant writers of postcolonial India.[1]

Amongst his works are Saat Sakkam Trechalis (tr. Seven Sixes Are Forty Three) (1974), Ravan and Eddie (1994), and the epic novel, Cuckold (1997) for which he was awarded the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award in English by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.[1][2][3]

Novels

Nagarkar is notable among Indian writers for having written acclaimed novels in more than one language. His first novel, Saat Sakkam Trechalis (later published in English as Seven Sixes Are Forty Three) is considered one of the landmark works of Marathi literature. His novel Ravan and Eddie, begun in Marathi but completed in English, was not published until 1994.[4] Since Ravan and Eddie, all Nagarkar's novels have been written in English. His third novel, Cuckold on mystic Meerabai's husband, Bhoj Raj, was published in 1997 and won the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award. It has been translated into a number of languages and has become one of the most beloved contemporary Indian novels, both in India and in Europe. It took him nine years to write his next, God's Little Soldier, a tale of a liberal Muslim boy's tryst with religious orthodoxy, which was published in 2006, to mixed reviews.[5][6][7] In 2012, he published The Extras, a sequel to Ravan and Eddie that traces the adult lives of Ravan and Eddie as extras in Bollywood. The third and last book in the "Ravan and Eddie" series was written in 2015, "Rest in Peace' to complete a trilogy of sorts

Kiran Nagarkar was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, described as the 'highest tribute Germany can pay to individuals'.[8]

Plays and screenplays

In 1978, Nagarkar wrote the play Bedtime Story, based partly on the Mahābhārata. Its performance was extra-legally banned for 17 years by fundamentalist parties, including the Shiv Sena. Nagarkar's theatre work also includes Kabirache Kay Karayche and Stranger Amongst Us, and his screenplay work includes The Broken Circle, The Widow and Her Friends, and The Elephant on the Mouse, a film for children. Nagarkar played the part of Brother Bono[9] in Movie Split Wide Open

Personal life

Nagarkar comes from a lower-middle-class family. His parents belonged to a branch of Brahmoism, which in Maharashtra was called the Prarthana Samaj. A Westward-looking attitude towards Hinduism runs in his family; his grandfather attended the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago.

From June to November 2011 he was 'writer in residence' of the Literaturhaus Zurich and the PWG Foundation in Zurich.[10]

Nagarkar studied at Fergusson College in Pune and the S.I.E.S. College in Mumbai.

Awards and honours

Works

Novels

  • 1974 Seven Sixes are Forty Three (tr. of Saat Sakkam Trechalis). Translated by Shubha Slee. Pub. Heinemann, 1995. ISBN 0-435-95088-6.
  • 1994 Ravan and Eddie
  • 1997 Cuckold
  • 2006 God's Little Soldier
  • 2012 The Extras
  • 2015 Rest in Peace
  • 2017 Jasoda: A Novel

Plays and screenplays

  • 1978 Bedtime Story
  • Kabirache Kay Karayche
  • Stranger Amongst Us
  • The Broken Circle
  • The Widow and Her Friends
  • The Elephant on the Mouse
  • Black Tulip

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Sanga, p. 177
  2. ↑ Sahitya Akademi Awards 1955–2007: English Archived 11 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine. Sahitya Akademi Official website.
  3. ↑ "In Conversation: The artful storyteller". The Hindu. 5 March 2006.
  4. ↑ "'The terrorist is inside us'". The Tribune. 15 April 2006.
  5. ↑ "The Soldier Reads". Outlook. 24 April 2006.
  6. ↑ "LITERATURE: The light and the tunnel". The Hindu. 13 April 2006.
  7. ↑ Shashi Tharoor (8 May 2006). "Review:A Fancy Bird Too Heavy To Fly". Outlook.
  8. 1 2 Staff writer (7 November 2012). "Germany confers Cross of Order of Merit, to Babasaheb Kalyani, Kiran Nagarkar". ANI. Archived from the original on 9 November 2012. Retrieved 18 February 2013.
  9. ↑ Kiran Nagarkar on IMDb
  10. ↑ Angela Schader (20 June 2011). "Der indische Romancier Kiran Nagarkar ist Zürichs neuer "writer in residence"" (in German). Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
  11. ↑ Staff writer (17 February 2013). "The Hindu Literary Prize goes to Jerry Pinto". The Hindu. Retrieved 18 February 2013.

References

  • Yasmeen Lukhmani, ed. The Shifting Worlds of Kiran Nagarkar's Fiction, Indialog Publications, New Delhi, 2004 ISBN 81-87981-59-8
  • Sanga, Jaina C. (2003). South Asian novelists in English: an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-31885-9.
  • Kiran Nagarkar on Extras, sexual repression & humourless Indians
Interviews
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