Githa Hariharan
Githa Hariharan | |
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Born | 1954 (age 66–67) |
Occupation | Writer |
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Githa Hariharan (born 1954) is an Indian writer based in New Delhi. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best first novel in 1993. Her other works include the short story collection 'The Art of Dying(1993); the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994)], When Dreams Travel (1999), In Times of Siege(2003), Fugitive Histories(2009) and I Have Become the Tide (2019) and a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places (2014).
Hariharan has written children's stories and co-edited a collection for children called Sorry, Best Friend! (2012). She has also edited a collection of translated short fiction, A Southern Harvest (1993), the essay collection From India to Palestine: Essays in Solidarity (2014) and co-edited Battling for India: A Citizen’s Reader (2019).
Early life[]
Githa Hariharan was born in Coimbatore, India, and she grew up in Bombay and Manila. She was educated in these two cities and later in the United States. She got a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in English Literature and Psychology from Bombay University in 1974; and a Master of Arts in Communications from the Graduate School of Corporate and Political Communication, Fairfield University, Connecticut, 1977. She worked as a staff writer in WNET-Channel 13 in New York, and from 1979 to 1984, she worked as an editor in the Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi offices of Orient Longman, where she was responsible for the social science, fiction and women's studies lists. From 1985 to 2005, she worked as a freelance professional editor for a range of academic institutions and foundations.
Career[]
Hariharan first worked in the Public Broadcasting System in New York and then with a publishing firm as an editor in India.[1] She is currently, a full-time writer.[2]
Hariharan's fiction has been translated into a number of languages including French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, Greek, Urdu and Vietnamese; her essays and fiction have also been included in anthologies such as Salman Rushdie's Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997. She wrote a monthly column for many years on different aspects of culture and their political and social underpinnings, in The Telegraph, Kolkata. She has been Visiting Professor or Writer-in-Residence in several universities, including Dartmouth College and George Washington University in the United States, the University of Canterbury at Kent in the UK, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and in India, Jamia Millia Islamia and Goa University.
Hariharan is also a founder member of the Indian Writers’ Forum, a public trust set up to promote Indian diversity and freedom of expression; and address, through discussion, debate and participation in public events and campaigns, current issues in the overlapping practice of culture, academics, art and politics. The Forum runs two sites, the Indian Cultural Forum which focuses on cultural politics; and Guftugu, an online journal that showcases diverse cultural, artistic and academic practice in India.
Gita Hariharan's novels A Thousand Faces of Night (1992) and The Ghost of Vasu Master (1994) are concerned with rewriting folk tales and children's stories. In The Ghost of Vasu Master (1994) a retired schoolteacher, Vasu Master, succeeds in winning over the problem child Mani by storytelling. The stories are reworking of the Panchtantra. Vasu comes to recognize 'the necessity of reconstruction' from the dismantled parts of various ideas, beliefs, models' that are his inheritance.
A Thousand Faces of Night deals with the positioning of Indian Women in relation to this orientalist idea of tradition. Hariharn herself returned to India after attending graduate school in the United States and this novel is an account of the foreign returned Devi's attempt to find aa way of living in contemporary India.[3]
Her novel I Have Become the Tide,[4] published in 2019 in India, includes three narratives that intertwine past and present to raise an urgent voice against the cruelties of caste, and the destructive forces that crush dissent.
Her edited book, Battling for India: A Citizen’s Reader (co-edited with Salim Yusufji) was published in 2019 by Speaking Tiger in India. The reader includes voices and experiences of those who battle for India through their private struggles and public activism: Alivelamma, a woman farmer. Huchangi, Rohith, Ravan—poet, scholar, activist; all dalit. Sukalo, Rajkishor, Leelabati—activist, poet, singer; adivasis. Eighteen-year-old Muddu Thirthahalli and ninety-one-year-old Nayantara, both writers; Amarjeet, Sonia and 2000 others gathered at a worker'’ rally. Salima, Hafiz, Aslah, who refuse to be second-class citizens. Among them, and with them, are the voices of journalists, artists, teachers and students.
Activism[]
In 1995, Hariharan challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act as discriminatory against women. The case, Githa Hariharan and Another vs. Reserve Bank of India [5] and Another, led to a Supreme Court judgment in 1999 on guardianship.
In February 2021, she was detained for four days by Enforcement Directorate (ED) personnel as part of a raid on NewsClick.[6]
Bibliography[]
Author[]
- The Thousand Faces of Night, Penguin Books, 1992; Women's Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-7043-4465-5
- The Art of Dying, Penguin Books, 1993, ISBN 978-0-14-023339-1
- The Ghosts of Vasu Master, Viking, Penguin Books India, 1994; Penguin Group, 1998, ISBN 978-0-14-024724-4
- When Dreams Travel, Picador, 1999, ISBN 978-0-330-37236-7; Penguin Group Australia, 2008, ISBN 978-0-14-320428-2
- The Winning Team, Illustrator Taposhi Ghoshal, Rupa & Co., 2004, ISBN 978-81-291-0570-7
- In Times of Siege. Pantheon Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-375-42239-3.; Random House Digital, Inc., 2004, ISBN 978-1-4000-3337-9
- Fugitive Histories, Penguin Group, 2009, ISBN 978-0-670-08217-9
- Almost Home, Restless Books, 2014, ISBN 978-1-632-06061-7
- I Have Become the Tide, Simon and Schuster India, 2019, ISBN 9-386-79738-0
Editor[]
- A Southern Harvest, Kath, 1993, ISBN 978-81-85586-10-6
- Sorry, Best Friend!, Illustrated Ranjan De, Tulika Publishers, 1997, ISBN 978-81-86895-00-9
- Battling for India: A Citizen's Reader, Speaking co-editor Salim Yusufji, 2019, Speaking Tiger, ISBN 9789388874182
References[]
- ^ Hariharan, Githa 1954 -. (1999). In The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English
- ^ "Indian Women writing in English".
- ^ Mehrotra, Arvind (2008). A Concise History Indian Literature in English. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. ISBN 978-8178243023.
- ^ Archana Pai Kulkarni (12 June 2019). "Githa Hariharan On Writing About Caste, Dissent And Resistance". SheThePeople.TV. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
- ^ "SC redefined Hindu Guardianship Law". Indian National Bar Association. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
- ^ Apoorvanand (14 February 2021). "It's Clear Why NewsClick Is Being Targeted, and Why it Was Viewed as a Threat". The Wire. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
Sources[]
- Kader Aki (2007). Mythology and Reality in Githa Hariharan's "The Thousand Faces of Night". GRIN Verlag. ISBN 978-3-638-76601-2.
External links[]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Githa Hariharan. |
- Official website
- There is no one single authority in my stories’: Githa Hariharan The Hindu, April 6' 2019.
- Plea for pluralism The Hindu, April 22' 2003.
- Githa Hariharan in Conversation with TM Krishna, Kerala Literature Festival 2016, YouTube DC Books, 22 Feb 2016.
- Non-fiction: a fiction writer’s gift, Sumana Mukherjee, Live Mint, Feb 2015.
- The Cerebral Erotica Was Fun, Bhavdeep Kang, Outlook India, Feb 01' 1999.
- An Interview with Githa Hariharan Luan Gaines, Curled Up With a Good Book, 2003.
- Singing about the dark times. Sharanya Manivannan, The Hindu Business Line, April 2019
- There is no such thing as an objective fiction writer, Paromita Chakrabarti Indian Express March 10, 2019
- We are talking of more than writers’ rights; we are talking of letting people live An interview with Githa Hariharan, Laetitia Zecchini Writers and Free Expression, July 2017.
- Freedom of speech is an index of maturity of a society: Author Githa Hariharan, Yoshika Sangal Governance Now, April 2017.
- An Interview with Author Githa Hariharan, Tishman Review, 2016.
- Githa Hariharan Talks Indian Femme Fatales and Politics, Ploughshares, September 2016
- Githa Hariharan on her latest novel I Have Become The Tide, Rohith Vemula, politics of her writing, Firstpost, March 2019.
- Githa Hariharan’s Response to Aniruddhan Vasudevan Declining the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation, Newsclick, February 2018
- Indian women novelists
- 1954 births
- Living people
- Fairfield University alumni
- People from Coimbatore
- University of Mumbai alumni
- 20th-century Indian novelists
- People from New Delhi
- Indian women editors
- Indian editors
- 21st-century Indian novelists
- 20th-century Indian women writers
- 21st-century Indian women writers
- 20th-century Indian journalists
- 21st-century Indian journalists
- Women writers from Tamil Nadu
- Journalists from Delhi
- Novelists from Tamil Nadu
- Journalists from Tamil Nadu