Amit Chaudhuri

Acclaimed by the critic Eileen Battersby as an author who has 'perfected an observational fiction based on insight and memory', Amit Chaudhuri (b.1962) has steadily built a multi-faceted career as an academic and musician as well as a writer. ...

While he was brought up in Mumbai and moved to London as a student, Chaudhuri formed a deep sense of connection early in his life to Kolkata, where he was born. It was central to his 1991 semiautobiographical debut A Strange and Sublime Address, whose protagonist recalls the delights the city offered him as a child in the 1970s, and it surfaces often in a body of work that now includes short stories, poems, non-fiction and eight novels that explore themes relating to modern Indian life, including post-colonialism, classical music and outsideness.

Chaudhuri credits his success to the variety that he has built into his career, stating in a recent interview for Literary Hub that he believes that ‘dispersal of attention is essential’ for allowing thoughts to germinate and that he often works standing up, wandering from room to room with his notebook (he writes his novels longhand). Recognition of his achievements has come from several directions, with awards ranging from the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book to the 2022 James Tait Black Prize for the Finding the Raga, his exploration of the transformative power of music on his own life and how he understands the world.

Having taught contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia until 2021 and spent a year as Creative Fellow at UCL, Chaudhuri has since returned to India and is now professor of creative writing at Ashoka University.