Santanu Kumar Acharya

Santanu Kumar Acharya Biography

Santanu Kumar Acharya is an Indian writer from Odisha. He was born in Bengal. He contributed to Indian literature through novels, essays, short story collections, Children's literature, Travelogues, autobiography etc, and his works were written in Hindi, Oriya and Bengali languages. Nara Kinnara is his famous Oriya novel, for which he bagged Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award in 1962. He is a recipient of National Award for Children's Literature from the Ministry of Education, Government of India for the years 1961 and 1963, for his works - Mo katha ghoda katha kahe and Akashaku satoti pahacha respectively. His short story collection, Chalanti Thakura bagged Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993. He is a recipient of many more awards.

Santanu Kumar Acharya was born on 15 May 1933 in Mominpur, West Bengal. His family originally hails from Cuttack district of Odisha. He was born into the family of Ray Bahdur Gopal Chandra Praharaj, Kaizar-i-Hind, the creator of the celebrated 4-language Odiya Encyclopedia. Santanu's father Ananta Charan Acharya was a renowned school teacher in Orissa. He lost his mother Krishnapriya and turned to nature and poetry since young. His maternal grandfather Kulamani Mishra was a military engineer who fought the World War I, a scientist and a sage whose psychological traits were inherited by child Santanu.

He predominantly wrote in Odia language, apart from a few books in Bengali and Hindi. He contributed a total of 15 novels, 22 short story collections comprising about 400 stories, and 10 children's books to Indian literature, written in different languages. Nara Kinnara, Shatabdira Nachiketa, Chalanti Thakura, Dakshinabarta and Shakuntala are his famous works. Santanu worked as a college teacher for 34 years from 1958 to 1992 and retired as the Registrar of Utkal University, Odisha.

Published: July 17, 2018

Updated: July 17, 2018