Vikram Chandra

Vikram Chandra

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Category: Literature

Vikram Chandra Profile

  • Name:
  • Vikram Chandra
  • Other Name:
  • Vikramaditya Chandra
  • Born:
  • July 23, 1961
  • Born / Home Town:
  • Delhi
  • Father:
  • Navin Chandra
  • Mother:
  • Kamna Chandra
  • Spouse:
  • Melanie Abrams
  • Awards:
  • Commonwealth Writers Prize’s Best First Book Award and David Higham Prize for Fiction for Red Earth and Pouring Rain in 1996

Vikram Chandra Biography

 

Vikram Chandra is an Indian-American writer whose first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in 1996. He has also authored Love and Longing in Bombay (1997) and most recently Sacred Games (2008). Kamna Chandra, known for many playwrights and Bollywood movies like Chandini, Prem Rog and 1942: A love story is his mother. Tanuja Chandra, famous director known for the movies Dushman, Sur and Sangarsh and film critic on NDTV, Anupama Chandra Chopra are his sisters. Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopra is his brother-in-law (husband of Anupama Chandra Chopra). Chandra has also co-written the script of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Mission Kashmir (2000) with Suketu Mehta. 

 

Chandra was born in New Delhi in 1961 as the son of a business executive, Navin Chandra and popular story writer of Bollywood, Kamna Chandra. He did his high school education at Mayo College in Ajmer, Rajasthan and later joined St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. But he went to US and completed graduation in English from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Chandra attended film school at Columbia University, but left the course in the middle to write a novel. He completed M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 1987. Later he worked as a lecturer at George Washington University and University of California, Berkeley.

 

Inspired by the autobiography of James Skinner, he wrote his first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain. It was published in the year 1995 in India, US and UK by different publishers. He received outstanding critical acclaim for his first book and also earned Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. His second book, ‘Love and Longing in Bombay’ published in 1997 won Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Published: N/A

Updated: October 29, 2013

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