Farrukh Dhondy | |
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| Born | 1944 (age 80) Poona, India |
| Education | The Bishop's School; University of Poona; Pembroke College, Cambridge; University of Leicester |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, playwright, screenwriter, activist |
| Spouse | Mala Sen (m. 1968; div. 1976) |
Farrukh Dhondy (born 1944) is an Indian-born British writer, playwright, screenwriter and left-wing activist who resides in the United Kingdom.
Dhondy was born in 1944 in Poona, India, where he attended The Bishop's School, and obtained a BSc degree from the University of Poona (1964). [1] He won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he read Natural Sciences before switching to English, earning a BA degree in 1967.[ citation needed ] After graduating he studied for a master's degree at Leicester University and was later a lecturer at Leicester College of Further Education and Archbishop Temples School, Lambeth, London. [2]
In Leicester, Dhondy became involved with the Indian Workers' Association and later, in London, with the British Black Panthers, joining the publication Race Today in 1970, along with his close friend Darcus Howe, and former partner Mala Sen, [3] and discovering his calling as a writer. [4]
Dhondy's literary output is extensive, including books for children, textbooks and biographies, as well as plays for theatre and scripts for film and television. [5] He is also a columnist, [6] [7] [8] a biographer (of C. L. R. James; 2001), [9] and media executive, having been Commissioning Editor at Channel Four television from 1984 to 1997. During his time with Channel Four, he wrote the comedy series Tandoori Nights (1985–87) for the channel, which concerned the rivalry of two curry-house owners.
His children's stories include KBW (Keep Britain White), a study of a young white boy's response to anti-Bengali racism. In 2011 Dhondy published his translation of selections from the Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi, Rumi: a New Translation. Dhondy also wrote the screenplay for the 2005 Bollywood historical blockbuster Mangal Pandey: The Rising , starring Aamir Khan and Toby Stephens. In 2012, Dhondy scripted a short film called The K File. This film dealt with a fictional take on the judgement of Ajmal Kasab and was directed by Oorvazi Irani. In 2013, Dhondy's play Devdas was premiered in London and was subsequently replayed globally. 2013 also saw the publication of his novel Prophet Of Love (HarperCollins). His collection of Rumi translations was published in 2014 and received a 4.5-star rating on Goodreads. [10]
Dhondy was lauded in the respected political magazine New Internationalist , in its prestigious "final page", which led to the resurgence of his lifelong campaign to recruit more BAME talent at the BBC, with an article subsequently printed in the New Statesman [11] (covered in The Voice newspaper). [12]
His latest book, Hawk and Hyena, follows the story of Charles Sobhraj. Dhondy appeared on the podcast The Literary City [13] with Ramjee Chandran to talk about his escapades with Charles Sobhraj as well as about his autobiography, Fragments Against My Ruin: A Life. [14] Dhondy was at the 2022 Jaipur Literature Festival, London edition to talk about his books.
Phoolan Devi, popularly known as the Bandit Queen, was an Indian dacoit (bandit) who became a politician, serving as a member of parliament until her assassination. She was a woman of the Mallah subcaste who grew up in poverty in a village in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where her family was on the losing side of a land dispute which caused them many problems. After being married off at the age of eleven and being sexually abused by various people, she joined a gang of dacoits. Her gang robbed higher-caste villages and held up trains and vehicles. When she punished her rapists and evaded capture by the authorities, she became a heroine to the Other Backward Classes who saw her as a Robin Hood figure. Phoolan Devi was charged in absentia for the 1981 Behmai massacre, in which twenty Thakur men were executed, allegedly on her command. After this event, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned, and calls to apprehend her were amplified. She surrendered two years later in a carefully negotiated settlement and spent eleven years in Gwalior prison, awaiting trial.
The Masnavi, or Masnavi-ye-Ma'navi, also written Mathnawi, or Mathnavi, is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, also known as Rumi. The Masnavi is one of the most influential works of Sufism, ascribed to be like a "Quran in Persian". Some Muslims regard the Masnavi as one of the most important of Islamic literature, falling behind only the Quran. It has been viewed by many commentators as the greatest mystical poem in world literature. The Masnavi is a series of six books of poetry that together amount to around 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines. It is a spiritual text that teaches Sufis how to reach their goal of being truly in love with God.
Norman Richard Collins was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. This was the first organisation to break the BBC's broadcasting monopoly when it began transmitting in 1955.
Sylvia Lynd was an Anglo-Irish poet, essayist, short story writer and novelist. She was born in London but both of her parents, A.R. Dryhurst and her mother, the suffragist writer Nora Dryhurst were Dubliners. Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. From 1904 to 1906, Lynd studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, later moving on to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Around this time, she was associated with the Inghinidhe na hÉireann, an Irish nationalist women’s organisation. In 1908, a monthly magazine was produced, Bean na hÉireann, which sought to discuss topics such as politics, the vote for women, language, and labour issues. Lynd edited the first issue before returning to England and Helena Molony took it over.
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings is a British journalist and military historian, who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of The Daily Telegraph, and editor of the Evening Standard. He is also the author of thirty books, most significantly histories, which have won several major awards. Hastings currently writes a bimonthly column for Bloomberg Opinion and contributes to The Times and The Sunday Times.
André Maurois was a French author.
Leighton Rhett Radford "Darcus" Howe was a British broadcaster, writer and racial justice campaigner. Originally from Trinidad, Howe arrived in England as a teenager in 1961, intending to study law and settling in London. There he joined the British Black Panthers, a group named in sympathy with the US Black Panther Party.
The Bitch is a 1979 British drama film directed by Gerry O'Hara. It is a sequel to The Stud (1978) and, like its predecessor, is based on a novel by the British author Jackie Collins and stars her sister Joan Collins as Fontaine Khaled. Both films were made for a relatively small sum but were highly profitable at the box office, and were among the first successes in the emerging home video market of the early 1980s.
Michael Foreman is a British author and illustrator, one of the best-known and most prolific creators of children's books. He won the 1982 and 1989 Kate Greenaway Medals for British children's book illustration and he was a runner-up five times.
Tahmima Anam is a Bangladeshi-born British writer, novelist and columnist. Her first novel, A Golden Age (2007), was the Best First Book winner of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prizes. Her follow-up novel, The Good Muslim, was nominated for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize. She is the granddaughter of Abul Mansur Ahmed and daughter of Mahfuz Anam.
The Alchemist is a novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho which was first published in 1988. Originally written in Portuguese, it became a widely translated international bestseller. The story follows the shepherd boy Santiago in his journey across North Africa to the pyramids of Egypt after he dreams of finding a treasure there.
Frances Catherine Partridge CBE was an English writer. Closely connected to the Bloomsbury Group, she is probably best known for the publication of her diaries. She married Ralph Partridge in 1933. The couple had one son, (Lytton) Burgo Partridge (1935–1963).
Charles Thomas Osborne was an Australian journalist, theatre and opera critic, poet and novelist. He was the assistant editor of The London Magazine from 1958 until 1966, literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1971 until 1986, and chief theatre critic of Daily Telegraph (London) from 1986 to 1991.
Ferdinand Dennis is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer, who is Jamaican by birth but at the age of eight moved to England, where his parents had migrated in the late 1950s. Dr James Procter notes: "Perhaps as a result of his Caribbean background, Dennis is a writer ultimately more concerned with routes than roots. This is foregrounded in much of his fictional work, notably his most recent and ambitious novel to date, Duppy Conqueror (1998), a novel which moves from 1930s Jamaica to postwar London and Liverpool, to Africa. Similarly, Dennis' non-fiction centres on journeying rather than arrival, from Behind the Frontlines: Journey into Afro-Britain (1988) to Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (2000)."
Mala Sen was a Bengali-Indian-British writer and human rights activist. As an activist, she was known for her civil rights activism and race relations work in London during the 1960s and 1970s, as part of the British Asian and British Black Panthers movements, and later her women's rights activism in India. As a writer, she was known for her book India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi, which led to the acclaimed 1994 film Bandit Queen. After researching the oppression of women in rural India, she also published Death by Fire in 2001.
Guerrilla is a British drama television series set in early 1970s London, against the backdrop of the Immigration Act 1971 and British black power movements such as the British Black Panthers and Race Today Collective. It was written and directed by John Ridley and stars Idris Elba, Freida Pinto and Babou Ceesay in leading roles. Guerrilla debuted on Sky Atlantic on 13 April 2017 and on Showtime on 16 April 2017.
The British Black Panthers (BBP) or the British Black Panther movement (BPM) was a Black Power organisation in the United Kingdom that fought for the rights of black people and racial minorities in the country. The BBP were inspired by the US Black Panther Party, though they were unaffiliated with them. The British Panthers adopted the principle of political blackness, which included activists of black as well as South Asian origin. The movement started in 1968 and lasted until around 1973.
Priya Sarukkai Chabria is an Indian poet, translator and novelist writing in English, and a curator. She has written four poetry collections, two speculative fiction novels, translations from Classical Tamil, literary nonfiction, and a novel. She has edited two poetry anthologies. She is also founding editor of Poetry at Sangam, an Indian online literary journal of poetry.
Leila Hassan Howe is a British editor and activist, who was a founding member of the Race Today Collective in 1973, having previously worked for the Institute of Race Relations. She became editor of the Race Today journal in 1986. Hassan was also a member of the Black Unity and Freedom Party. She is co-editor of a collection of writings from Race Today published in 2019.
H. O. "Naz" Nazareth is an Indian-born British film maker, writer, journalist and barrister. Resident in London, England, he was co-founder of the film production company Penumbra.
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