Chaman Nahal Biography

Indian novelist, born in Sialkot, formerly in India and now in Pakistan, educated at the University of Delhi and the University of Nottingham. Since 1949 he has taught in a succession of universities in India; he became Professor of English at the University of Delhi in 1980. My True Faces (1973), his first novel, was followed in 1975 by Azadi, a compelling narrative of the divisive effects of Partition in 1947, which is widely regarded as his finest work. A trilogy, The Crown and the Loincloth (1981), The Salt of Life (1990), and The Triumph of the Tricolour (1993), sustains his engagement with the modern history of India through their psychologically penetrating treatments of Gandhi and his career. His other novels, which are noted for the realism with which they present the Indian middle classes, include Into Another Dawn (1977), a love story largely set in America, and The English Queens (1979), a highly imaginative satire of India's English-speaking élite. Among his numerous critical studies is D. H. Lawrence: An Eastern View (1971).