Upamanyu Chatterjee
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Upamanyu Chatterjee, is a Bengali Indian author. He was born in 1959, at Patna, Bihar, is one of a new generation of Indo-English writers. He graduated from St. Xavier's School, Delhi, and St. Stephen's College, of the University of Delhi. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. In 1990, he lived as Writer in Residence, at the University of Kent, UK. In 1998, he was appointed Director (Languages) in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.
Chatterjee has written a handful of short stories of which "The Assassination of Indira Gandhi" and "Watching Them" are particularly noteworthy. His is best-selling novel, English, August : An Indian story (subsequently made into a major film), was published in 1988 and has since been reprinted several times. A review in Punch described the book as "Beautifully written … English, August is a marvelously intelligent and entertaining novel, and especially for anyone curious about modern India". The novel follows Agastya Sen - a young westernized Indian civil servant whose imagination is dominated by women, literature and soft drugs. This vivid account of "real India" by the young officer posted to the small provincial town of Madna is "a funny, wryly observed account of Agastya Sen's year in the sticks", as described by a reviewer in the Observer.
His second novel, The Last Burden, appeared in 1993. This novel recreates life in an Indian family at the end of the twentieth century. It is a fascinating portrayal of the Indian middle class. The Mammaries of the Welfare State was published at the end of 2000 as a sequel to English, August. His latest novel, Weight Loss, a dark comedy, was published in 2006.
Dr. Mukul Dikshit (mukulrewa@gmail.com) who is a Senior Knowledge Executive, English, at PT Education Varanasi, has been awarded the first Ph.D. in 2006 that critically evaluates the comprehensive talent of Chatterjee's fictional works. This Ph.D. thesis entitled "Indian Urbanity From Vacillation to Resignation: A Critical Study of the Fiction of Upamanyu Chatterjee" was completed by Dr. Dikshit under the able supervision of Dr. Rajiv Trivedi, Professor and Head, Department of English, Government New Science College, Indore, Madhya Pradesh - India. Dr. Rajiv Trivedi, after trying his hand at poetry, engineering, drama and journalism, has settled down to teach literature. After the first one in 1979, several of his plays have been broadcast from various stations of Akashvani.
[edit] Bibliography
| Name | Publisher | ISBN | Publishing date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English, August : An Indian story | Faber & Faber,
Rupa & Co, NYRB Classics |
Hardback: ISBN 0-571-15101-9
Paperback: ISBN 0-14-027811-7 Reprint: ISBN 1-59017-179-9 |
First published June 1988.
Reprint by NYRB Classics 2006 |
Hailed as the definitive urban Indian coming-of-age novel |
| The Last Burden | Faber & Faber | Paperback: ISBN 0-571-17155-9 | November 17, 1994 | |
| The Mammaries of the Welfare State | Viking | ISBN 0-670-87934-7 | 2000 | Sequel to English August |
| Weight Loss | Penguin Books India | Paperback: ISBN 0-670-05862-9 | February 28, 2006 |
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