Bharati Mukherjee

Bharati Mukherjee Biography

Bharati Mukherjee is an Indian-born American writer. She was born in Kolkata on July 27, 1940. Currently she serves as a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987) with her husband, Clark Blaise is one of her most noted non-fiction work. Her published fiction books include - The Tiger's Daughter (1971), Wife (1975), Jasmine (1989), The Holder of the World (1993), Leave It to Me (1997), Desirable Daughters (2002), The Tree Bride (2004) and Miss New India (2011). She has also authored a few short stories and Memoirs.

Bharati Mukherjee is of Bengal origin, born in Kolkata, West Bengal. After independence, she travelled abroad with her parents and returned back to her hometown in the early 1950s. She did her schooling at Loreto School and graduated from Loreto College, University of Calcutta in 1959. After post-graduation from the University of Baroda in 1961, she went to US to study at University of Iowa where she received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1963 and her Ph.D. in 1969 from the department of Comparative Literature. She married Canadian author Clark Blaise and got settled in Canada. After living more than one decade in Montreal and Toronto, both returned to US.

The couple has co-authored books Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977) and The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987). She regards herself as an American author rather than an Indian, as she feels her emotions are with North America. She has also taught at McGill University, Skidmore College, Queens College, and City University of New York and finally Berkeley.

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Updated: December 24, 2013