Githa Hariharan
Githa Hariharan | |
---|---|
Born | 1954 (age 69–70) |
Occupation(s) | Writer, editor |
Known for | The Thousand Faces of Night I Have Become the Tide |
Website | githahariharan |
Githa Hariharan (born 1954) is an Indian writer and editor based in
Hariharan has also written children's stories and co-edited a collection for children called Sorry, Best Friend! (1997). She has also edited a collection of translated short fiction, A Southern Harvest (1993), the essay collection From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity (2014) and co-edited Battling for India: A Citizen’s Reader (2019).
Biography
Githa Hariharan was born in 1954 in
She completed a B.A. in English Literature from Bombay University in 1974 and an M.A. in Communications from Fairfield University, Connecticut[6] in 1977.[7]
From 1979 to 1984, Hariharan worked as an editor in the Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi offices of Orient Longman.[7] From 1985 to 2005, she worked as a freelance editor.[7] She has been a Visiting Professor or Writer-in-Residence at Dartmouth College,[8] George Washington University, the University of Kent, Nanyang Technological University, Jamia Millia Islamia and Goa University.[7]
Hariharan is also a founder member of the Indian Writers' Forum.[9]
Writing career
According to The Atlantic Companion to Literature, "Githa Hariharan's works belong to the renaissance of Indo-English literature which began in the early 1980s when Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children appeared."[5] Hariharan published her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night, in 1992,[4]: 112 [10] which she wrote while on maternity leave from work.[5] According to Meenakshi Bharat, this book "questions the confining code of patriarchy and brings to light the survival strategies of three generations of women" and Hariharan "makes concerted use of myth and folktale to enlarge the space of the lives of "real" people, especially women."[4]: 112 She then published a collection of short stories, The Art of Dying, in 1993.[4]: 112
In The Ghost of Vasu Master (1994), a retired schoolteacher, Vasu Master, uses storytelling to support a student who "either cannot or will not speak."[4]: 112 After forming the Movement for Secularism with other women writers, she wrote children's stories, and co-edited the collection Sorry, Best Friend (1997) with Shama Futehally.[4]: 111 In her novel When Dreams Travel (1999), Hariharan retells Arabian Nights with Scheherazade and her sister Dunyazad as protagonists.[4]: 112–113 [11] According to Hariharan, her interest as a writer was "not in the story of how the 1001 nights began or happened, but where that tale ends. What happens in stories after the moment when people live happily ever after."[12]
Hariharan has described In Times of Siege (2003) as her "first overtly political novel."[13] According to The Atlantic Companion to Literature, it "is in fact a radical book which discusses the ruling political parties' attempt to rewrite history [...] to give the educational system a Hindu slant."[5] In a 2019 interview with The Indian Express, she stated, "My other books, too, looked at the power structure but I finally decided that I had the confidence and the rage to write about where I was living."[13] In The Hindu, Gowri Ramnarayan writes that In Times of Siege, her "angst is over the betrayal of the secularist vision which shaped the nation, the shrinkage of space in contemporary India for debate, dissent, for the co-existence of pluralities, minorities, cultures."[14]
In 2014, her edited volume of nonfiction essays From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity was published and includes essays by herself,
Her sixth novel I Have Become the Tide was published in 2019 and is the third with a focus on contemporary India.[18] In 2020, a Malayalam translation of the novel was published by Mātr̥bhūmi Buks.
Hariharan co-edited the 2019 essay collection Battling for India: A Citizen’s Reader with Salim Yusufji. In a review for The Wire, Priyanka Tripathi writes, "Drawing its vision from Ambedkar's democracy, the book reiterates that an Indian citizen’s political democracy (full rights to the nation) becomes null and void in the absence of social (discrimination on the basis of caste and age) and economic (freeing all Indians from poverty) democracy."[19]
Her work has been translated into Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Malayalam, Urdu and Vietnamese.[5][7][8] Her writing has also been included in many anthologies of fiction and essays.[7] She has regularly written a monthly column on culture in The Telegraph.[7]
Activism
In 1995, with assistance from
Bibliography
Author
- The Thousand Faces of Night, Penguin Books, 1992; Women's Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-7043-4465-5
- The Art of Dying, Penguin Books, 1993, ISBN 978-0-14-023339-1
- The Ghosts of Vasu Master, Viking, Penguin Books India, 1994; Penguin Group, 1998, ISBN 978-0-14-024724-4
- When Dreams Travel, Picador, 1999, ISBN 978-0-14-320428-2
- The Winning Team, Illustrator Taposhi Ghoshal, Rupa & Co., 2004, ISBN 978-81-291-0570-7
- In Times of Siege, Pantheon Books, 2003, ISBN 978-1-4000-3337-9
- Fugitive Histories, Penguin Group, 2009, ISBN 978-0-670-08217-9
- Almost Home, Restless Books, 2014, ISBN 978-1-632-06061-7
- ISBN 9-386-79738-0
- Vēliyēt̲t̲amāyi ñān : nōval, Mātr̥bhūmi Buks, 2020 ISBN 9789389869521 (translated by Johny M. L. into Malayalam)
Editor
- A Southern Harvest, Kath, 1993, ISBN 978-81-85586-10-6
- Sorry, Best Friend!, Illustrated Ranjan De, Tulika Publishers, 1997, ISBN 978-81-86895-00-9
- Battling for India: A Citizen's Reader, Speaking co-editor Salim Yusufji, 2019, Speaking Tiger, ISBN 9789388874182
References
- ^ Mukherjee, Sumana (21 February 2015). "Non-fiction: a fiction writer's gift". Mint. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ISBN 9780192122711– via Oxford Reference.
- ISBN 978-0-415-27885-0. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ ISBN 9780313318856. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
- ^ ISBN 9788126908325. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- JSTOR 40149846. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g "EGO 127 Reading and Writing Conflict ( 1 credit course- 15 hours) By Githa Hariharan, Visiting Chair Professor, Kavivarya Bakibaab Borkar Chair in Literature, Goa University". Visiting Research Professors Programme. Goa University. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ a b "Githa Hariharan". The Montgomery Fellows Program. Dartmouth College. 6 June 2016. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ "Githa Hariharan". The Indian Express. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
The writer is a founder member of the Indian Writers' Forum
- ISBN 978-8178243023.
- ^ "When Dreams Travel (By Githa Hariharan)". The Sentinel. 6 October 2018. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Kang, Bhavdeep (1 February 1999). "'The Cerebral Erotica Was Fun'". Outlook. Archived from the original on 22 April 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ a b Chakrabarti, Paromita (10 March 2019). "'There is no such thing as an objective fiction writer'". The Indian Express. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ Ramnarayan, Gowri (22 April 2003). "Plea for pluralism". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 21 August 2003. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Dundoo, Sangeetha Devi (27 January 2014). "'My voice is a medley'". The Hindu. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ "Almost Home". Kirkus Reviews. 15 January 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Anantharaman, Latha (4 April 2015). "Home is where the heart is". The Hindu. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Sharma, Manik (6 March 2019). "Githa Hariharan on her latest novel I Have Become The Tide, Rohith Vemula, politics of her writing". Firstpost. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ Tripathi, Priyanka (10 April 2019). "Review: Battling Hatred and Sectarianism for Indian Democracy". The Wire. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
- ^ a b "Hariharan v. Reserve Bank of India". Legal Information Institute. Cornell University. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- Times of India. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ "SC redefined Hindu Guardianship Law". Indian National Bar Association. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
- ^ Rajagopal, Bulbul (6 April 2019). "'There is no one single authority in my stories': Githa Hariharan". The Hindu. Retrieved 30 August 2022.
- ^ Masoodi, Ashwaq (1 March 2016). "Five cases where courts have given secular laws precedence over personal codes". Mint. Retrieved 1 September 2022.
Further reading
- Sidiquii, Shehjad (2015). Feminist Perspective in Githa Hariharan's Novels. RUT Printer and Publisher. ISBN 9789384663063.
- Kader Aki (2007). Mythology and Reality in Githa Hariharan's "The Thousand Faces of Night". GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3-638-76601-2.
External links
- Official website
- An Interview with Githa Hariharan Luan Gaines, Curled Up With a Good Book, 2003.
- Githa Hariharan in Conversation with TM Krishna, Kerala Literature Festival 2016, YouTube DC Books, 22 Feb 2016.
- An Interview with Author Githa Hariharan, Tishman Review, 2016.
- Githa Hariharan Talks Indian Femme Fatales and Politics, Ploughshares, September 2016
- Freedom of speech is an index of maturity of a society: Author Githa Hariharan, Yoshika Sangal Governance Now, April 2017.
- We are talking of more than writers’ rights; we are talking of letting people live An interview with Githa Hariharan, Laetitia Zecchini Writers and Free Expression, July 2017.
- Githa Hariharan’s Response to Aniruddhan Vasudevan Declining the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation, Newsclick, February 2018