Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri (born 15 May 1962) is an Indian English-language novelist, poet and essayist. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009.[1] He is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia,[2] and since 2020, he also teaches at Ashoka University, India as Professor of Creative Writing.[3] In September 2020, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Modern Language Association (MLA).[4]

Amit Chaudhuri
Born15 May 1962  (age 58)
Kolkata 
LanguageEnglish language 
Notable awardsSahitya Akademi Award 
Website
www.amitchaudhuri.com
Amit Chaudhuri

Life and career

Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta (renamed Kolkata) in 1962 and grew up in Bombay (renamed Mumbai). His father was Nages Chandra Chaudhuri, the first Indian CEO of Britannia Industries Limited. His mother, Bijoya Chaudhuri, was a highly acclaimed singer of Rabindra Sangeet, Nazrul Geeti, Atul Prasad and Hindi bhajans.[5] He was a student at the Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay. He took his first degree in English literature from the University College London, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on D. H. Lawrence's poetry at Balliol College, Oxford.

He is married to Rosinka Chaudhuri, Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC).[6] She was the inaugural Mellon Professor of the Global South at the University of Oxford, 2017-18.[7] They have one daughter, Aruna.

Chaudhuri began writing a series for The Paris Review titled The Moment from January 2018.[8] He also writes an occasional column, 'Telling Tales', for The Telegraph.[9]

He served on the Humanities Jury for the Infosys Prize in 2018.[10]

Activism

In response to the marginalisation of the literary by both mainstream publishing houses and by academia, Amit Chaudhuri began, in December 2014, a series of annual symposiums on what he called ‘literary activism’. This brought together writers, academics, and artists each year. One of the features of Chaudhuri's initiative has been a resistance to specialisation, or what he calls ‘professionalisation’. The project has involved the fashioning of a new terminology by Chaudhuri, in which he creates terms like ‘market activism’, and assigns very particular means to words like ‘literary activism’ and ‘deprofessionalisation’.

A collection of essays from the first symposium was published in 2017 by Boiler House Press in the UK, and by OUP in India and the US.

In 2015, Chaudhuri began drawing attention to Kolkata's architectural legacy and campaigning for its conservation[11][12][13][14][15]

Music

Amit Chaudhuri is a singer in the North Indian classical tradition, who has performed internationally.[16] He learned singing from his mother, Bijoya Chaudhuri, and from the late Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale[17] of the Kunwar Shyam gharana. In the 1990s, he learnt new compositions from Pandit A. Kanan. He has performed worldwide. HMV India (now Saregama) has released two recordings of his singing, and a selection of the khayals he has performed on CD. Bihaan Music brought out a collection called The Art of the Khayal in 2016.

  • Puriya Dhanashree
  • Jog Bahar Drut
  • Meera Bhajan
  • Jog Bahar Tarana
  • E parabase rabe ke, Rabindra Sangeet
  • Chandrasakhi

In 2004, he began to conceptualise a project in experimental music, This is Not Fusion, which received critical acclaim upon its inaugural performance in Calcutta on January 15, 2005. His first CD of experimental music, This Is Not Fusion (Times Music), was released in Britain on the independent jazz label, Babel LabelK. His second CD, Found Music, came out in October 2010 in the UK from Babel and was released in India from EMI. It was an allaboutjazz.com Editor's Choice of 2010.

Awards and honours

Bibliography

Novels
  • A strange and sublime address. Penguin, 2012, ISBN 978-0-143-41944-0
  • Afternoon Raag. Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 978-0-434-12349-0
  • Freedom Song. Picador, 1998; Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, ISBN 978-0-375-40427-6 excerpt
  • A New World. Picador. 2000. ISBN 978-0-375-41093-2.; Random House Digital, Inc., 2002, ISBN 978-0-375-72480-0
  • The Immortals. Picador. 2009. ISBN 978-0-307-27022-1.
  • — (2015). Odysseus Abroad. Hamish Hamilton.
  • Friend of My Youth, 2017, Penguin Random House India

Collected short stories
  • Chaudhuri, Amit (2002). Real time : stories and a reminiscence. Picador.

Poetry
  • Chaudhuri, Amit (2005). St. Cyril Road and other poems. Penguin.

Libretto

Non-fiction

Edited Anthologies
  • Chaudhuri, Amit, ed. (2001). The Picador book of modern Indian literature. Picador.
  • Memory's Gold: Writings on Calcutta (2008)

Critical studies and reviews

Reprints
Reprint Details Originally Published
A strange and sublime address. Minerva. 1992. Heinemann, 1991

Newspaper Articles

References
  1. "Royal Society of Literature » Amit Chaudhuri". rsliterature.org. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
  2. "Your Teachers - UEA". uea.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
  3. https://www.ashoka.edu.in/faculty#!/amit-chaudhuri-1670
  4. "Honorary Members and Fellows". Modern Language Association. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
  5. Amit Chaudhuri (22 April 2017). "Bijoya Chaudhuri - Eso Nipabane (Tagore)". Retrieved 15 July 2018 – via YouTube.
  6. "Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta". cssscal.org. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  7. "First ever Global South professor announced | University of Oxford". ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  8. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/23/the-moment-of-the-houses/
  9. Samhita Chakraborty, 'There's something about a Calcutta childhood' Talking Tales with Amit Chaudhuri, The Telegraph, 19 February 2014. Accessed 30 August 2020.
  10. Humanities Jury, Infosys Science Foundation. "Infosys Prize - Jury 2018".
  11. "About CAL – C.A.L." Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  12. "March to save architectural heritage". telegraphindia.com. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  13. "Heritage at a click". telegraphindia.com. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  14. "A short walk - a para to remember". telegraphindia.com. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  15. Chaudhuri, Amit (2 July 2015). "Calcutta's architecture is unique. Its destruction is a disaster for the city". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  16. Alex Tickell (2002). "Chauduri, Amit". In Alison Donnell (ed.). Companion to Contemporary Black British Culture. Routledge. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-134-70025-7.
  17. "Amit Chaudhuri | Outlook India Magazine". www.outlookindia.com/. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  18. "UEA professor Amit Chaudhuri wins £30,000 literary prize - Press Release Archive - UEA". uea.ac.uk. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
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