Writers, Etc. – Session 30

Rana Dasgupta

in conversation with

Chiki Sarkar

Tuesday, 13^th May 2014, 6.30pm

M. L. Bhartia Auditorium, Alliance française de Delhi

Writers, Etc is our literary platform: a space where the written word gets primacy, where written ideas and their practitioners can interact with each other and the general public, coming together to ask pertinent questions and seek their answers: what role does literature play in contemporary societies? How do writers see their responsibilities vis-à-vis the public and, turning that over, how do we see writers? How has the written word adapted to its place among the growing pantheon of varied and addictive forms of cultural transmission? The aim is to encourage a discovery, unencumbered by genre, of all the written oeuvres, ranging from living legends to new and emerging talent.

For our 30^th session, we are very delighted to invite Rana Dasgupta in conversation with Chiki Sarkar .

Rana Dasgupta was born in Canterbury and studied at Balliol College, Oxford and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After his studies he worked for an international marketing firm, which took him to London, Kuala Lumpur and then New York. In 2001, he moved to Delhi to write. Tokyo Cancelled, a cycle of contemporary folktales, appeared in 2005 and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. Solo (2009) won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Capital: a Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi appeared earlier this year. The Guardian called it an ‘intense, lyrical, erudite and powerful book… Dasgupta has provided a welcome corrective to the reams of superficial travel writing describing the whimsical, the exotic, the booming or simply the poverty-stricken in India. His is a much more complex, darker story.’

Chiki Sarkar is the publisher of Penguin Random House India.

For more information, please contact [email protected]