Upamanyu Chatterjee

Upamanyu Chatterjee Biography

Upamanyu Chatterjee is an Indian civil servant and writer, best known for his celebrated work – August, written in English language. It was his debut novel published in 1988. After writing this novel, the author was described as one of the powerful and emerging voices among English writing Indian authors, post Indian independence. Though the author took a satire way to describe things, his writings were indeed thought provoking, and it handled serious issue of administration in India in post-colonial period with ease. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1994. Author of a best-selling novel, he has also penned several short stories, "The Assassination of Indira Gandhi" and "Watching Them", to mention a few.

He was born in Patna in 1959. He attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi and joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1983. In 1988, he published his first work, August, which help him to achieve international acclamation. He was among the first of the recent generation of Indian authors to find success outside of India. He sketched the real picture of India through his debut work. Since then, he contributed to Indian literature in the form of three novels in twelve years, and some short stories.  His 1993 novel, The Last Burden and the sequel to August, ‘The Mammaries of the Welfare State’ (2000) couldn’t replicate the magic of ‘August’.

His fourth novel, Weight Loss, published in 2006 was a dark comedy. Way To Go, a sequel to The Last Burden published in 2010 and Fairy Tales at Fifty, published in 2014 are his other published works. The author mostly prefer to narrate things in a satire way. He is a recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award in 2004 and his novel Way To Go was shortlisted for ‘The Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010’.

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Updated: December 11, 2015