Ved Mehta

Ved Mehta Biography

Ved Mehta is an Indian visually challenged author, born in Lahore, British India in 1934. He mostly writes non-fiction works in English, apart from a few novels like Delinquent Chacha. He has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009. He published his first book - Face to Face, an autobiography in 1957. Walking the Indian Streets, Fly and the Fly-Bottle, The New Theologian, Portrait of India, John Is Easy to Please, Daddyji, Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles, The New India, A Family Affair: India Under Three Prime Ministers, A Ved Mehta Reader: The Craft of the Essay and All for Love are other published books.

Ved Mehta was born on 21 March 1934 in Lahore, British India. Now his birth place belongs to Pakistan. Amolak Ram Mehta and Shanti Mehta were his parents. Till the age of three he was a perfect child. After that cerebrospinal meningitis, he lost eye sight. So he was sent to Dadar School for the Blind in Mumbai from Lahore for his studies.

He was later educated at Pomona College, followed by Balliol College, Oxford and Harvard University. He studied Modern History at Oxford. Moved abroad in 1949 for studying, he lived in western world for many years and became an American citizen in 1975. He published his first book, an autobiography called Face to Face in 1957 which accounts Indian politics and history and Anglo-Indian relations. Delinquent Chacha in 1966 was his first published novel. It was serialized in a magazine.

He has published around 25 books in total. He also wrote several articles and short stories apart from memoirs, novels and other non-fiction. He also served as a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1961 to 1994 till he was terminated. He is married to Linn Fenimore Cooper Mehta, a descendant of James Fenimore Cooper, an American writer of the first half of 19^th century. They got married in 1985.

Published: March 01, 2019

Updated: March 01, 2019