Narayan Sitaram Phadke

Narayan Sitaram Phadke (1894-1978), was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India.

He was an MA from Bombay ( Mumbai) University.

He worked in 1919 -1920 as an assistant editor of Maratha newspaper. He was a professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Rajaram College in Kolhapur during 1926 -1951. For some years in that period, he also edited Ratnakar, Zhankar, and Anjali. On his retirement he settled in the city of Pune in Maharashtra but continued to write.

Allaha Ho Akbar was Phadke's first novel. He wrote about 150 books, including 74 novels, 27 collections of his short stories, 22 Reviews, 7 Plays, and autobiographical Maje Jeevan: Ek Kadambari.This autobiographical work came in for severe criticism by those who had known Phadke intimately as they felt that at many places he had twisted or altered the facts to suit his own image.

For many years he also publicly feuded with another well known Marathi author Acharya Atre.

Phadke served as the chairman of Marathi Sahitya Sammelan held in Ratnagiri in 1940.

The Indian government awarded him a Padmabhushan title in 1962 for his literary accomplishments.

Na si, as he was popularly known, was married to Kamala Phadke, a prolific writer in her own right. They had three children Rohini, Anjali and Vijay.

Kamala Phadke- who earlier was his student - as a matter of fact was his second wife.The separation from first wife & second marriage of his scandalized the conservative Marathi opinion in those days and caused a lot of adverse comment. This however left him unfazed.

After separation from his first wife by whom he had had four children he continued to support her and his first family. A daughter of Phadke from the first marriage later wrote about the silent but terrible suffering of his first wife who being relatively uneducated could not articulate herself and having been brought up in conservative value system chose silent suffering.

A partial list of books

Novels:

External links