Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta in 1962 and grew up in Bombay. He was a student at the Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay, took his first degree, in English, from University College London, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on D H Lawrence’s poetry at Balliol College, Oxford.He is the author of seven novels, the latest of which is Friend of My Youth. His first major work of non-fiction, Calcutta: Two Years in the City, was published in the UK and India in 2013. It was published by Knopf in the US in September 2013. His first book of critical essays, the influential Clearing a Space, was published in 2008. His second book of essays, Telling Tales, was published in the UK in August 2013.Chaudhuri is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the English Association, and was a judge of the Man Booker International Prize. In 2008, a Guardian editorial about him appeared in the newspaper’s famous ‘In Praise of…’ series, the first time an Indian writer was so honoured. In its editorial, the Guardian called him ‘a publisher’s nightmare’ for his artistic impulses and experimental tendencies.