Aanchal Malhotra

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Aanchal Malhotra
Aanchal Malhotra (4).jpg
: Malhotra at a panel discussion at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2024
Born1990 (age 3334)
New Delhi, India
OccupationAuthor
Alma mater Ontario College of Art & Design; Concordia University
Genre Indian history
Notable works
  • The Book of Everlasting Things (2022)
  • In the Language of Remembering (2022)
  • Remnants of a Separation (2017)
  • Remnants of Partition (2019)
Website
aanchalmalhotra.com

Aanchal Malhotra (born 1990) is an Indian oral historian, author and artist, known for her work on the Partition of India. Her research and writings focus on the oral histories of individuals affected by the Partition, capturing their memories and the tangible remnants of that period. [1]

Contents

She is the author of the critically acclaimed books Remnants of a Separation and In the Language of Remembering.

Early life and education

Aanchal Malhotra was born in New Delhi, India, in 1990, where she continues to live and work. She received a BFA degree in traditional printmaking and art history from Ontario College Of Art & Design, Toronto, where she won the University Medal and the Sir Edmund Walker Award for Graduate Studies. She completed a MFA in Studio Art from Concordia University, Montréal. She belongs to the family of Bahrisons Booksellers, founded by her paternal grandfather, Balraj Bahri, in 1953 in New Delhi. [2]

Career

Malhotra's debut book Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory [3] was published by HarperCollins India in 2017, to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian independence. The project (under the same name) initially began as her MFA dissertation at Concordia University, Montréal, and included field research in India, Pakistan and England. [4] It is an attempt to revisit the Partition through personal and intimate objects that refugees carried with them across the border during their migration. [5] [6] [7] Written as a crossover between history and anthropology, it portrays a human history of Partition. It was named a Hindustan Times "India @ 70" book [8] and shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, Shakti Bhatt Prize First Book Award, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, and Hindu Lit for Life Non Fiction Prize.

Aanchal Malhotra speaking at Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2024, The Book Of Everlasting Things Aanchal Malhotra.jpg
Aanchal Malhotra speaking at Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2024, The Book Of Everlasting Things

Outside the subcontinent, it was published under the title Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided, by Hurst Publishers in 2019. [9] It was shortlisted by the British Academy for the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. [10] In 2022, it won the US-based Council for Museum Anthropology Book Prize, where the committee said “Malhotra’s concern for detail — such as languages spoken, family members present and their interactions during interviews, setting and mood (as well as her own responses to the stories) — creates a strong moral and ethical underpinning for this work . . . [It] is a model for significant contributions to museum anthropology.” [11] [12]

To mark the 75th anniversary of Partition in 2022, Malhotra published a sequel titled, In the Language of Remembering: The Inheritance of Partition, which focused on the contemporary relevance of Partition in the everyday lives of Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis. [13]

Her debut novel, The Book of Everlasting Things, was also published in 2022. [14]

In addition to her books, she has been involved in several oral history projects and is an advisor the Project Dastaan peace initiative. In 2017, she co-founded the Museum of Material Memory, [15] a crowdsourced digital repository tracing family history and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity from the Indian subcontinent. . [2]

Books

Non-fiction

Fiction

Anthologies

Awards and honours

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References

  1. "5 female writers who celebrate womanhood and champion individuality through their works". Harper Bazar. Retrieved 13 June 2024.
  2. 1 2 Sharma, Himini (23 July 2019). "The Precious Past". The Citizen.
  3. Malhotra, Aanchal (2017). Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory. HarperCollins. pp. 1–3. ISBN   978-9352770120.
  4. 1 2 "The stories objects tell: What survivors of the Partition of India took with them". CBC. 15 November 2019.
  5. Sridhar, Lalitha (2 December 2017). "Tangible memories: Tales through objects from across the bloodied border". The Hindu .
  6. Jhurani, Aarti (18 August 2019). "Five heart-wrenching books that explore the partition of India". The National.
  7. Sanyal, Devapriya (October 2019). "Book review: Remnants of a separation". Contemporary South Asia. 27 (4): 564. doi:10.1080/09584935.2019.1689670.
  8. 1 2 "India @ 70: 5 books that capture India's freedom struggle, independence and partition". Hindustan Times. 14 August 2017. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
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  10. "Indian author on British Academy's Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize shortlist". The Times of India. 12 September 2019. ISSN   0971-8257 . Retrieved 8 June 2024.
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  12. 1 2 Scroll Staff (17 October 2022). "Aanchal Malhotra's 'Remnants of Partition' wins US-based Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award". Scroll.in. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
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  14. "Book Review: The Book of Everlasting Things by Aanchal Malhotra". www.publishersweekly.com. 26 September 2022. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
  15. "Museum of Material Memory". museumofmaterialmemory.com. 11 August 2022. Retrieved 8 June 2024.
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  18. Malhotra, Aanchal (2021). Roy, Nilanjana S. (ed.). Our freedoms: essays and stories from India's best writers. New Delhi, India: Juggernaut. pp. 10–15. ISBN   978-93-5345-145-5.
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Further reading