Amit Chaudhuri
![]() | This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. (April 2025) |
Amit Chaudhuri | |
---|---|
Born | 15 May 1962 ![]() Kolkata ![]() |
Language | English language ![]() |
Notable awards | Sahitya Akademi Award ![]() |
Website | |
www |

Amit Chaudhuri (born 15 May 1962) is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer, and music composer from India. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Ashoka University.[1]
He was previously professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia from 2006 to 2021.[2] In 2013, he was awarded the Infosys Prize for outstanding contribution to the humanities in Literary Studies[3]
In January 2018, Chaudhuri began writing a series for The Paris Review titled The Moment.[4] He also wrote an occasional column, "Telling Tales", for The Telegraph.[5]
Personal life
[edit]Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta (renamed Kolkata) in 1962 and grew up in Bombay (renamed Mumbai). [citation needed] He took his first degree in English literature from University College London, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on D. H. Lawrence's poetry at Balliol College, Oxford.[citation needed]
He is married to Rosinka Chaudhuri, Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC).[6][7]
Music
[edit]Chaudhuri is a singer in the North Indian classical tradition, who has performed internationally.[8] He learned singing from his mother, Bijoya Chaudhuri, and from the late Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale[9] of the Kunwar Shyam gharana
Awards and honours
[edit]- 1991 Betty Trask Award and Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book for A Strange and Sublime Address[8]
- 1994 Encore Award and Southern Arts Literature Prize, Afternoon Raag[8]
- 2009 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[10]
- 2012 Infosys Prize for the Humanities in Literary Studies[11]
- 2020 Honorary Fellow, Modern Language Association (MLA)[12]
- 2022 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Biography, Finding the Raga.[13]
Bibliography
[edit]Novels
[edit]- Afternoon Raag. Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 978-0-434-12349-0 The book won the Encore Award.[14] The 25th anniversary edition was published by Penguin Random House India in 2019 with a foreword by James Wood.[15]
- Freedom Song. Picador, 1998; Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, ISBN 978-0-375-40427-6 excerpt
- A New World. Picador. 2000. ISBN 978-0-375-41093-2.; Random House Digital, Inc., 2002, ISBN 978-0-375-72480-0
- The Immortals. Picador. 2009. ISBN 978-0-307-27022-1.
- A strange and sublime address. Penguin, 2012, ISBN 978-0-143-41944-0
- — (2015). Odysseus Abroad. Hamish Hamilton.
- Friend of My Youth, 2017, Penguin Random House India
- Sojourn. Faber & Faber. 2022. ISBN 978-0-571-36036-9.
Collected short stories
[edit]- Chaudhuri, Amit (2002). Real time : stories and a reminiscence. Picador.
Poetry
[edit]- Chaudhuri, Amit (2005). St. Cyril Road and other poems. Penguin.
Libretto
[edit]- Sukanya, the only opera by Ravi Shankar
Non-fiction
[edit]- Chaudhuri, Amit (2003). D. H. Lawrence and 'difference' : postcoloniality and the poetry of the present. Oxford University Press.
- Small Orange Flags (Seagull, 2003) reviewed[usurped]
- Clearing A Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture. Peter Lang. 2008. ISBN 978-1-906165-01-7.
- Calcutta: Two Years in the City, Union Books (2013)
- Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music. New York Review Books. 2021. ISBN 978-1-681-37478-9.
Edited anthologies
[edit]- Chaudhuri, Amit, ed. (2001). The Picador book of modern Indian literature. Picador.
- Memory's Gold: Writings on Calcutta (2008)
Dissertation
[edit]Chaudhuri's D.Phil. dissertation at Oxford was published by Clarendon Press as a monograph titled D.H. Lawrence and Difference in 2003. It was called a "classic" by Tom Paulin in his preface to the book; Terry Eagleton wrote in the London Review of Books that it is "a fine book, which if it had expanded its scope and dug rather deeper might even have been even better".[16]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Faculty/Staff".
- ^ "Your Teachers - UEA". uea.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- ^ "Infosys Prize - Laureates 2012 - Prof. Amit Chaudhuri". www.infosys-science-foundation.com. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
- ^ "The Paris Review - The Moment of the Houses". 23 January 2018.
- ^ Samhita Chakraborty, 'There's something about a Calcutta childhood' Talking Tales with Amit Chaudhuri, The Telegraph, 19 February 2014. Accessed 30 August 2020.
- ^ "Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta". cssscal.org. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
- ^ "First ever Global South professor announced | University of Oxford". ox.ac.uk. 23 October 2017. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
- ^ a b c Alex Tickell (2002). "Chauduri, Amit". In Alison Donnell (ed.). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-134-70025-7.
- ^ "Amit Chaudhuri | Outlook India Magazine". www.outlookindia.com/. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
- ^ "Royal Society of Literature » Amit Chaudhuri". rsliterature.org. Archived from the original on 19 November 2018. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- ^ "UEA professor Amit Chaudhuri wins £30,000 literary prize - Press Release Archive - UEA". uea.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- ^ "Honorary Members and Fellows". Modern Language Association. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
- ^ "James Tait Prize". Independent.co.uk. 24 August 2022.
- ^ Miller, Karl (23 October 2011). "BOOK REVIEW / Long, short and beautifully formed: 'Afternoon Raag' - Amit Chaudhuri". The Independent. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
- ^ Wood, James (8 June 2019). "'Afternoon Raag' reminds us Amit Chaudhuri wrote 'autofiction' 25 years before it became a trend". Scroll.in. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
- ^ Eagleton, Terry (5 February 2004). "Anti-Humanism". London Review of Books. Vol. 26, no. 3. ISSN 0260-9592. Retrieved 6 July 2021.
External links
[edit]- Official website
- Amit Chaudhuri at Twitter
- Amit Chaudhuri at British Council: Literature
- Amit Chaudhuri at the Munzinger-Archiv
- Amit Chaudhuri at the Los Angeles Review of Books
- "Surpanakha", story at The Little Magazine
- "An unlikely radical", The Hindu
- "A date with Amit Chaudhuri", The Telegraph
- 1962 births
- 20th-century Indian poets
- 20th-century Indian essayists
- 20th-century Indian male writers
- 20th-century Indian novelists
- Academics of the University of East Anglia
- Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
- Alumni of University College London
- Bengali Hindus
- Bengali writers
- English-language writers from India
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- Indian emigrants to England
- Indian male essayists
- Indian male novelists
- Living people
- Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in English
- Writers from Kolkata
- Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford