On this day, two extraordinary authors share a birthday.
Amitav Ghosh’s education spans from Dehradun to Oxford. For a short time he worked at The Indian Express and it was while he was studying at Oxford that he wrote his first book The Circle of Reason. From then, his writing career blossomed and his books have been translated into over twenty languages. Almost every book he has penned has won an award. He is probably the first cli-fi writer India has produced- his fascination for the sea, human history and migration make his novels complex, educational and must-reads. Ghosh’s writing veers on the non-fictional even when he writes fiction. A book that many readers I have spoken to love is The Hungry Tide, The Ibis Trilogy, The Glass Palace, Shadow Lines and Calcutta Chromosome.
Jhumpa Lahiri, an American author born in London, is loved most for her debut collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies. Her book The Namesake was adapted into a popular movie and she has a string of awards under her belt. Her stories have captured the Indian immigrant experience but she hasn’t stopped there- she has moved on to finding the true language of her soul by delving into a completely foreign language – Italian. This is an experiment in the fictional realm, one that many writers and translators can learn from.
Read this interview with Lahiri to understand this prestigious author’s love affair with the Italian language.
Which books do you love by these authors? Tell us in the comments.
