Writers
India has produced several great writers who have influenced a whole generation and continue to inspire the coming generations by their writings. Their works vividly portray the picture of Indian society and subtly bring out the ills it. Indian writers have played a progressive part in the reform of Indian society. Here is a brief profile of Famous Indian writers.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee also known as Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was one of the greatest novelists and poets of India. He is famous as author of Vande Mataram, the national song of India.
Premchand
Premchand popularly known as Munshi Premchand was one of the greatest literary figures of modern Hindi literature. His stories vividly portrayed the social scenario of those times.
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore was an icon of Indian culture. He was a poet, philosopher, musician, writer, and educationist. Rabindranath Tagore became the first Asian to became Nobel laureate when he won Nobel Prize for his collection of poems, Gitanjali, in 1913. He was popularly called as Gurudev and his songs were popularly known as Rabindrasangeet.
Anita Desai
Anita Desai is an Indian novelist and short story writer. She is known for her sensitive portrayal of the inner feelings of her female characters. Many of Anita Desai's novels explore tensions between family members and the alienation of middle-class women.
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is a famous Indian novelist and social activist. Arundhati Roy came into limelight in 1997 when she won the Booker Prize for her first novel "The God of Small Things". She was awarded Sydney Peace Prize in 2004.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri is a famous Indian American author of Bengali origin. Her first novel, "The Namesake" was a major national bestseller and was named the New York Magazine Book of the Year. Jhumpa Lahiri became the first Asian to win the Pulitzer Prize when she won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book "Interpreter Of Maladies".
Mulk Raj Anand
Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian novelist, short-story writer. He was among the first writers to incorporate Punjabi and Hindustani idioms into English. Mulk Raj Anand's stories depicted a realistic and sympathetic portrait of the poor in India.
R.K. Narayan
R.K. Narayan is one of the most famous and widely read Indian novelists. His stories were grounded in a compassionate humanism and celebrated the humour and energy of ordinary life.
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is one of the most famous Indian origin authors. He is best known for the violent backlash his book The Satanic Verses (1988) provoked in the Muslim community. Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomenei issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, calling for his assassination, forcing Rushdie to go underground.
Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth was born on June 20, 1952 at Kolkata. His father, Prem, was an employee of the Bata India Limited shoe company who migrated to post-Partition India from West Punjab in Pakistan. Vikram Seth's childhood was spent in the town of Batanagar near Calcutta, Patna, and London.
V.S. Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul (Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul) was born on August 17, 1932, at Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago. His forefathers came as indentured labourers from India. Naipaul's upbringing familiarised him with every sort of deprivation, material and cultural. He got a scholarship to Oxford University and thus came to England.
Kiran Desai
Daughter of a well known Indian author, she is the winner of the 2006 Booker prize. Well, we are talking about the eminent Indian novelist Kiran Desai. She was born on the 3rd of September in the year 1971 in Chandigarh. She spent the early years of her life in Pune and Mumbai.
Mahadevi Varma
She is a well known Hindi poet of the Chhayavaad generation, the times when every poet used to incorporate romanticism in their poetry. She is more often called the modern Meera. Well, we are talking about the famous Mahadevi Varma, who achieved the Jnanpith award in the year 1982.
Shashi Deshpande
Shashi Deshpande is a well known name in the field of Indian literature. She was born in Dharwad in Karnataka as the daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist as well as a great Sanskrit scholar Sriranga. She pursued her education in Dharwad, Bombay and Bangalore.
Shobha De
Shobha De is an eminent Indian novelist, who is often known as India's Jackie Collins. She was born as Shobha Rajadhyaksha to the Saraswat Brahmin family of Maharashtra on the January 7, 1947. She completed her graduation from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and obtained degree in Psychology.
Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh is a senior prominent Indian novelist cum journalist. He was born on 2 February 1915 at Hadali in British India that is now a part of Punjab in Pakistan. A significant post-colonial writer in the English language, Khushwant Singh is known for his clear-cut secularism, humor and a deep passion for poetry.
Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Nirad C. Chaudhuri was a famous Bengali Indian writer. He was born on 23 November in 1897 at Kishoreganj located in the Mymensingh district of East Bengal of those days or today's Bangladesh. He studied at Kishorganj and then in Kolkata city.
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan was a prominent poetess in India, whose writings used to be very emotionally charged. She was born in 1904 at the Nihalpur village in Allahabad district. But after her wedding to a Thakur Laxman Singh of Khandwa, Chauhan shifted to Jabalpur in the year 1919.
Subramanya Bharathi
Subramanya Bharathi was a Tamil poet, reformer and freedom fighter during the pre-independence era. Also referred to by the name of Mahakavi Bharathiyar meaning Great Poet of Tamil, Bharathi's name is counted amongst the most celebrated bards of the country.
Mahasweta Devi
Mahasweta Devi is a reputed Indian writer who was born in the year 1926 into a middle class Bengali family at Dacca, which is located in present day Bangladesh. She received her education from the prestigious Shantiniketan set up by great Indian philosopher and thinker, Rabindranath Tagore that went on to become a part of the Visva Bharti University later on.
