Author: Vikram Chandra
Profile: Vikram Chandra is an American-Indian writer. He was born in New Delhi and completed his education at Mayo College, Ajmer, Rajasthan, St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Kenyon College, United States, did his BA at Pomona College, Claremont, California, Columbia University School of the Arts and M.A. at Johns Hopkins University. He has been lecturer at University of California, Berkeley and has taught at George Washington University. Vikram Chandra works as an independent consultant and software engineer and teaches Creative Writing. Both he and his wife Melanie Abrams teach creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley.
He divides his time and resides in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India and Oakland, California, U.S. with his wife and two daughters. Many Hindi plays and films have been written by Kamna Chandra, his mother. His sister is the well known screenwriter and filmmaker, Tanuja Chandra. Anupama Chopra, his other sister is a consulting editor and film critic for India’s NDTV.
Writing style: Vikram Chandra writes magnificent stories about terrible violence, betrayal, friendship, the astonishing modern cities and its dark side. He draws inspiration from his own life, nineteenth-century fiction, Bollywood movies, mystery novels, research on Mumbai streets and at the same time resonates with the emotional depth and intelligence of the best of literature. He has written about classical Indian aesthetics, culture of computer programming.
Published Texts:
1995 – Red Earth and Pouring Rain: A novel
1997 – Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories
2006 – Sacred Games
2013 – Greek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software
2018 – Sacred Games Netflix Tie-in Edition Part 1
2018 – Sacred Games Netflix Tie-in Edition Part 2
Awards and Acknowledgements:
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Boom in 1996 and the David Higham Prize for Fiction – for Red Earth and Pouring Rain, his debut novel
Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) – Love and Longing in Bombay (1997) a collection of short stories
Guardian Fiction Prize – Longing and Longing in Bombay was shortlisted
National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism) – Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty (2014) was a finalist