Vikram Chandra
Encyclopedia
Vikram Chandra is an Indian writer. His first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers' Prize
, Best First Book.
He is married to writer Melanie Abrams, who, like Chandra, teaches creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley
. Chandra currently divides his time between Mumbai
(Bombay), India
and Oakland, California
. He is often confused with his namesake Vikram A Chandra
, journalist and author of The Srinagar Conspiracy.
in 1961. His father, Navin Chandra, is a retired executive. His mother, Kamna Chandra, has written several Hindi films and plays; her most notable works include the films Prem Rog
and 1942: A Love Story
& yash chopra's "chandni
". One of his sisters, Tanuja Chandra
, is a filmmaker and screenwriter who has directed several films, including Sur and Sangharsh. His other sister, Anupama Chopra
, is a film critic and consulting editor for India's NDTV.
in Ajmer
, Rajasthan
, and attended St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai
. As an undergraduate student, he transferred to the United States
. He graduated from Pomona College
in Claremont, California
, with a B.A. magna cum laude in English (concentration in Creative Writing). Chandra then attended film school at Columbia University
, leaving halfway through to begin work on his first novel. He received his M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University
in 1987. He taught at George Washington University
, and lectured at University of California, Berkeley
.
soldier. The novel was written over several years at the writing programs at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston. It was published in 1995 by Penguin Books
in India; by Faber and Faber
in the UK; and by Little, Brown in the United States. Red Earth and Pouring Rain received outstanding critical acclaim, and it won both the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction
. The novel is named after a poem from the Kuruntokai
, an anthology of Classical Tamil love poems.
Love and Longing in Bombay, a collection of short stories, was published in 1997 by the same publishers as Red Earth and Pouring Rain. This collection of stories won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region), was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was well received by international press and media.
In 2000, Vikram served as co-writer, with Suketu Mehta
, for Mission Kashmir
, a Bollywood
movie directed by his brother-in-law, the award-winning director Vidhu Vinod Chopra
, and starring Hrithik Roshan
.
Sacred Games
, Vikram Chandra's most recent novel, was published in 2008. Set in a sprawling Mumbai, it features Sartaj Singh, a policeman who first appeared in Love and Longing in Bombay. Over 900 pages long, Sacred Games was one of the year's most anticipated new novels and was the subject of a bidding war amongst the leading publishers in India, the UK, and the US.
Commonwealth Writers' Prize
Commonwealth Writers is an initiative by the Commonwealth Foundation to unearth, develop and promote the best new fiction from across the Commonwealth. It's flagship are two literary awards and a website...
, Best First Book.
He is married to writer Melanie Abrams, who, like Chandra, teaches creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Chandra currently divides his time between Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
(Bombay), India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
. He is often confused with his namesake Vikram A Chandra
Vikram A Chandra
Vikram Chandra is the CEO of NDTV Group and is an anchor for the Big Fight, Gadget Guru, and the Nine o'clock news.-Career:Vikram Chandra has about 19 years of experience in Television Journalism...
, journalist and author of The Srinagar Conspiracy.
Family background
Chandra was born in New DelhiNew Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
in 1961. His father, Navin Chandra, is a retired executive. His mother, Kamna Chandra, has written several Hindi films and plays; her most notable works include the films Prem Rog
Prem Rog
Prem Rog is 1982 romantic Bollywood film directed by Raj Kapoor. Prem Rog literally means "love sick". The film tells the story of a man's love towards a woman who is a widow and of a higher status.-Plot summary:...
and 1942: A Love Story
1942: A Love Story
1942: A Love Story is a 1994 Bollywood film starring Anil Kapoor, Manisha Koirala, Jackie Shroff, Anupam Kher, Danny Denzongpa, and Pran. The film was the first ever to be given a U/A rating while featuring a scene, previously considered inappropriate for young children, showing the actors kissing...
& yash chopra's "chandni
Chandni
Chandni is a Hindi film released in 1989. The film stars Sridevi, Rishi Kapoor and Vinod Khanna, and was directed by Yash Chopra....
". One of his sisters, Tanuja Chandra
Tanuja Chandra
Tanuja Chandra is an Indian film director and writer. She is known for frequently directing woman-oriented films where the heroines are the main protagonists of her films.-Biography:...
, is a filmmaker and screenwriter who has directed several films, including Sur and Sangharsh. His other sister, Anupama Chopra
Anupama Chopra
Anupama Chopra is a noted author, journalist and film critic. She has written several books on Indian cinema and has been a movie reviewer with NDTV and India Today.-Career:...
, is a film critic and consulting editor for India's NDTV.
Education
Chandra received his high school education at Mayo CollegeMayo College
Mayo College is a public school founded by the 6th Earl of Mayo, who was Viceroy of India from 1869 to 1872.The school is located in Ajmer, in the state of Rajasthan, India....
in Ajmer
Ajmer
Ajmer , formerly written as Ajmere, is a city in Ajmer District in Rajasthan state in India. Ajmer has a population of around 800,000 , and is located west of the Rajasthan state capital Jaipur, 200 km from Jodhpur, 274 km from Udaipur, 439 km from Jaisalmer, and 391 km from...
, Rajasthan
Rajasthan
Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...
, and attended St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
. As an undergraduate student, he transferred to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He graduated from Pomona College
Pomona College
Pomona College is a private, residential, liberal arts college in Claremont, California. Founded in 1887 in Pomona, California by a group of Congregationalists, the college moved to Claremont in 1889 to the site of a hotel, retaining its name. The school enrolls 1,548 students.The founding member...
in Claremont, California
Claremont, California
Claremont is a small affluent college town in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States, about east of downtown Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The population as of the 2010 census is 34,926. Claremont is known for its seven higher-education institutions, its...
, with a B.A. magna cum laude in English (concentration in Creative Writing). Chandra then attended film school at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, leaving halfway through to begin work on his first novel. He received his M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
in 1987. He taught at George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
, and lectured at University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
.
Works
Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Chandra's first novel, was inspired by the autobiography of James Skinner, a legendary nineteenth century Anglo-IndianAnglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...
soldier. The novel was written over several years at the writing programs at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston. It was published in 1995 by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in India; by Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
in the UK; and by Little, Brown in the United States. Red Earth and Pouring Rain received outstanding critical acclaim, and it won both the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction
David Higham Prize for Fiction
The David Higham Prize for Fiction was inaugurated in 1975 to mark the 80th birthday of the late David Higham, literary agent, and was awarded annually to a citizen of the Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland, Pakistan, or South Africa for a first novel or book of short stories...
. The novel is named after a poem from the Kuruntokai
Kuruntokai
Kuruntokai ,a classical Tamil poetic work, is the second book of Ettuthokai, a Sangam literature anthology. Kuruntokai contains poems dealing with matters of love and separation content matter and were written by numerous authors. Nachinarkiniyar, a Tamil scholar living during the sixth or the ...
, an anthology of Classical Tamil love poems.
Love and Longing in Bombay, a collection of short stories, was published in 1997 by the same publishers as Red Earth and Pouring Rain. This collection of stories won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region), was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize, and was well received by international press and media.
In 2000, Vikram served as co-writer, with Suketu Mehta
Suketu Mehta
Suketu Mehta is a writer based in New York City. He was born in Kolkata, India, and raised in Bombay where he lived until his family moved to the New York area in 1977. He has attended New York University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.His autobiographical account of his experiences...
, for Mission Kashmir
Mission Kashmir
Mission Kashmir is a 2000 Bollywood film directed and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and starring Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta and Jackie Shroff as the main characters. Mission Kashmir follows the life and tragedy of a young boy named Altaaf after his entire family gets killed by...
, a Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
movie directed by his brother-in-law, the award-winning director Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Vidhu Vinod Chopra is an Indian director and producer. Chopra is the head of his own company, Vinod Chopra Productions, and is particularly known for producing the Munna Bhai films and 3 Idiots.-Early life:Born in a Punjabi family of Kashmir,...
, and starring Hrithik Roshan
Hrithik Roshan
Hrithik Roshan is an Indian actor who appears in Bollywood films.After having appeared in films as a child actor in the 1980s, Roshan made his film debut in a leading role in Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai for which Roshan earned his Filmfare Awards for Best Actor and Best Male Debut...
.
Sacred Games
Sacred Games (novel)
Sacred Games is a book by Vikram Chandra published in 2006.It has received -Plot summary:Sacred Games combines the ambition of a 19th-century social novel with a cops-and-Bhais detective thriller...
, Vikram Chandra's most recent novel, was published in 2008. Set in a sprawling Mumbai, it features Sartaj Singh, a policeman who first appeared in Love and Longing in Bombay. Over 900 pages long, Sacred Games was one of the year's most anticipated new novels and was the subject of a bidding war amongst the leading publishers in India, the UK, and the US.