Akhil Sharma | |
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![]() Akhil Sharma | |
Born | Delhi, India | 22 July 1971
Occupation | Novelist, professor |
Education | Princeton University (BA) Stanford University J.P. Stevens High School |
Notable works | An Obedient Father (2000) Family Life (2014) |
Notable awards | Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award (2001) Folio Prize (2015) International Dublin Literary Award (2016) |
Akhil Sharma (born July 22, 1971) is an Indian-American author and professor of creative writing. His first published novel An Obedient Father won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His second, Family Life , won the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary Award.
Born in Delhi, India, he immigrated to the United States when he was eight, [1] and grew up in Edison, New Jersey, where he graduated from J.P. Stevens High School. [2] Sharma described experiencing racism in school and in the city: "people cursing at us in the street, and being spat at at school." [3] Sharma's teenage brother was in a pool accident that left him in a thirty-year coma, an incident that forms the basis of Sharma's semi-autobiographical novel, Family Life. [4] Sharma studied at Princeton University, where he earned his B.A. in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School. While there, he also studied under a succession of notable writers, including Russell Banks, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Auster, John McPhee, and Tony Kushner. He then won a Stegner Fellowship to the writing program at Stanford, where he won two O. Henry Awards (1995 and 1997). [5] He then attempted to become a screenwriter, but, disappointed with his fortunes, left to attend Harvard Law School.
Sharma went on to become an assistant professor in the creative writing MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark. [6]
Sharma has published stories in The New Yorker , The Atlantic Monthly , The Quarterly , Fiction , the Best American Short Stories anthology, and the O. Henry Award Winners anthology. His short story "Cosmopolitan" was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 1998 , [7] and was also made into a 2003 film of the same name, which has appeared on the PBS series Independent Lens . [8]
Sharma's first novel was An Obedient Father for which he won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. [6] Sharma's second novel, Family Life was published by W. W. Norton & Company in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in the U.K. in April 2014. The New York Times described the semi-autobiographical novel as "deeply unnerving and gorgeously tender at its core.". [9] David Sedaris noted that "[e]very page is alive and surprising, proof of [Sharma’s] huge, unique talent." Sharma wrote about the 13 years it took to write Family Life in an essay on The New Yorker's website. [10] Family Life won the 2015 Folio Prize for fiction and the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award. [11] [12]
He shares office space with the writers John Wray, Isaac Fitzgerald, and Alice Sola Kim. [13] He and Wray had previously been part of an informal writing group that includes Gary Shteyngart, Suketu Mehta, and Ray Isle. [14]
In July 2017, Norton published Sharma's collection of short stories, A Life of Adventure and Delight.
Sharma and his first wife, Lisa Swanson, met in law school and married in 2001. [15] [16] They later divorced. In 2020, Sharma married Irish psychologist Christine Mulligan, [17] with whom he has a daughter. [18]
Title | Year | First published | Reprinted/collected | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
"The Blue Umbrella Man" | 1990 | Sharma, Akhil (Summer 1990). "The Blue Umbrella Man". The Quarterly (14): 153. | ||
"A Heart Is Such a Heavy Thing" | 1997 | Sharma, Akhil (November 30, 1997). "A Heart Is Such a Heavy Thing". The New Yorker. | A Life of Adventure and Delight | |
"Prosperity" | 2000 | Sharma, Akhil (June 11, 2000). "Prosperity". The New Yorker. | excerpt of An Obedient Father | |
"Surrounded By Sleep" | 2001 | Sharma, Akhil (December 2, 2001). "Surrounded By Sleep". The New Yorker. | A Life of Adventure and Delight and basis of A Family Life | |
"Mother and Son" | 2007 | Sharma, Akhil (Spring 2007). "Mother and Son". Granta. 97. | excerpt of A Family Life | Granta 97 theme: 'Best of Young American Novelists 2' |
"We Didn't Like Him" | 2013 | Sharma, Akhil (June 3, 2013). "We Didn't Like Him". The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 16. pp. 56–61. | A Life of Adventure and Delight | |
"A Mistake" | 2014 | Sharma, Akhil (January 12, 2014). "A Mistake". The New Yorker. | excerpt of A Family Life | |
"A Life of Adventure and Delight" | 2016 | Sharma, Akhil (May 16, 2016). "A Life of Adventure and Delight". The New Yorker. | A Life of Adventure and Delight | |
"You Are Happy?" | 2017 | Sharma, Akhil (April 10, 2017). "You Are Happy?". The New Yorker. | A Life of Adventure and Delight | |
"The Narayans" | 2024 | Sharma, Akhil (August 26, 2024). "The Narayans". The New Yorker. | ||
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An Obedient Father is a 2000 novel by Akhil Sharma. It received the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and Whiting Writers' Award. Set during the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the story is about a corrupt and loathsome bag man who lives with his daughter and granddaughter in a New Delhi slum. The novel started as a short story that was previously published.
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2015.
Family Life is a 2014 autobiographical novel by Akhil Sharma. Set in 1978, it tells the coming-of-age story of an eight-year old Indian boy named Ajay Mishra living with his recently immigrated family in New York City. The story develops around his older brother Birju, who suffers a life-changing accident, and how the family copes with the incident.
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