Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India, to a middle-class Muslim family. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Cambridge-educated businessman. At the age of fourteen Rushdie was sent to Rugby School in England. In 1964 Rushdie’s parents moved to Karachi, Pakistan, joining reluctantly the Muslim exodus—during these years there was […]
Saadat Hasan Manto (May 11, 1912–January 18, 1955) was a Pakistani Urdu short story writer of Kashmiri ancestry who was born in Samrala in the Ludhiana district of the Indian state of Punjab.He was one of the best short story tellers of the 20th century, and one of the most controversial as well. He is
Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan Agyeya is a pioneer of modern trends in the realm of Indian poetry. In literature, Hindi moved from a phase of revivalist cultural nationalism in the 1910s to mainstream Gandhian nationalism in the 1920s and the early 1930s.Over the following two decades Hindi, while firmly rooted in native ground, opened up and
Jalal al-Din Rumi, known to his disciples as Maulana Rumi, was born in Balkh, Ghurid empire (now in Afghanistan). His father, Bahauddin Walad, was a jurist and preacher. The family moved from place to place, perhaps because political reasons or because Bahauddin Walad did not have success as a preacher. Also the times were violent.
Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, where his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was an arts and crafts teacher at the Jeejeebhoy School of Art. His mother, the former Alice Macdonald, was a sister-in-law of the painter Edward Burne-Jones. India was at that time ruled by the British. Ruddy, as Kipling was affectionally called, was
American poet, one of the finest of rural New England’s 20th century pastoral poets. Frost published his first books in Great Britain in the 1910s, but he soon became in his own country the most read and constantly anthologized poet, whose work was made familiar in classrooms and lecture platforms. Frost was awarded the Pulitzer
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, south London, as the son of Robert Browning, a wealthy clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Wiedemann, of German-Scottish origin. Robert Browning Senior had spent in his youth some time on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, where he become disgusted at the slaves’ treatment. Back
Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ (1908 – April 24, 1974) was an Indian Hindi poet, who is considered as one of the most important modern Hindi poets. Dinkar emerged as a rebellious poet with his nationalist poetry in pre-Independence days. His poetry exuded veer rasa, and he has been hailed as a ‘Rashtrakavi’.Dinkar was born in a
Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) was one of the most widely travelled scholars of India, who spent forty-five years of his life on travel and away from home. He became a buddhist monk and eventually drew towards Marxist Socialism. He was given the title of Mahapandit (great scholar).India is known as land of great saints and scholars.
Raghuvir Sahay (1928-1990) is among the most significant figures on the modern literary scene in India. He represents a generation that grew with the aspirations of the freedom movement in the subcontinent, lived to see the unfolding of what this freedom meant for people at large, and gave voice to the unfulfilled aspirations. He died
Rabindranath Tagore was born on Tuesday, 7th May 1861 in a wealthy family in Calcutta at the address of 6, Dwarakanath Thakur Lane, Calcutta. He was the ninth son of Debenadranath and Sarada Devi. His grand father Dwarakanath Tagore was a rich landlord and social reformer. Even though he was from a very wealthy family,
R. K. Narayan was born in Madras, India on October 10, 1906. His father was a provincial head-master. He was the third of eight surviving children. His full name was Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami. In South India, the given name(s) is/are usually written last. His first name is a toponym and his second name is
Born in 1927 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, Qurratulain Hyder was one of the most celebrated of Urdu fiction writers. A trendsetter in Urdu fiction, she began writing at a time when the novel was yet to take deep roots as a serious genre in the poetry-oriented world of Urdu literature. She shook it out of
Phanishwar Nath Renu is a revolutionary novelist of the post-Premchand era of the Hindi literature. He was the voice of the contemporary rural India and among the pioneers to bring regional voices into the mainstream Hindi literature.He was born on 4th March 1921 in Aurahi Hingna in the district of Purnia. He received his primary
Pearl S. Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia. She spent her youth in China, in Chinkiang on the Yangtse River. She learned to speak Chinese before she could speak English. Her parents were missionaries. Buck’s father, Absalom Sydenstricker, was a humorless, scholarly man who spent years translating the Bible from Greek to Chinese. Her