Amit Chaudhuri Biography

Indian writer, born in Bombay and brought up in Calcutta; he studied at University College, London, and Balliol College, Oxford, and was made Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfenden College, Oxford. His first work of fiction, A Strange and Sublime Address (1991), consists of a novella and some stories; the former describes, in elegant, evocative prose, the holidays of a young boy from Bombay with his family in Calcutta. Stronger on atmosphere than on narrative, the novel won the Betty Trask award that year, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book the following year. His second novel, Afternoon Raag (1993), which blurs the boundaries between essay, memoir, and fiction, is similarly brief, lyrical, and evocative; the central metaphor of Indian music runs through a young Indian student's account of life in England and his musings on the nature of foreignness and belonging.