Rana Dasgupta (born 5 November 1971) is an English novelist and essayist. In 2010, The Daily Telegraph called him one of Britain's best novelists under 40.[1] In 2014, Le Monde named him one of 70 people who are making the world of tomorrow.[2] Among the prizes won by Dasgupta's works are the Commonwealth Prize and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award.
Dasgupta's first novel, Tokyo Cancelled (HarperCollins, 2005), was an examination of the forces and experiences of globalisation. Billed as a modern-day Canterbury Tales, it is about thirteen passengers stuck overnight in an airport who tell thirteen stories from different cities in the world, stories that resemble contemporary fairy tales, mythic and surreal. The tales add up to a broad exploration of 21st-century forms of life, which includes billionaires, film stars, migrant labourers, illegal immigrants and sailors.[8]Tokyo Cancelled was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.[citation needed]
Dasgupta's second novel, Solo (HarperCollins, 2009), was an epic tale of the 20th and 21st centuries told from the perspective of a 100-year-old Bulgarian man. Having achieved little in his 20th-century life, he settles into a long and prophetic daydream of the 21st century, where all the ideological experiments of the old century are over, and a collection of startling characters – demons and angels – live a life beyond utopia. A reviewer described it as "unfazed by the 21st century, confidently tracing the wrong turnings of the past 100 years, soaring insightfully over the mess of global developments that constitute the quagmire of today".[9]Solo was translated into 20 languages.[citation needed]
Dasgupta was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the novel Solo; it won both the region and overall best-book prize.[10]
His third book, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi (Canongate, 2014), is a non-fiction exploration of his adopted city of Delhi and, in particular, the changes and personalities brought about there by globalization. Capital won the Ryszard Kapuściński Award and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Ondaatje Prize.[citation needed]
Dasgupta is currently[when?] working on a book about a proposed crisis of the nation-state system. In March 2017, he co-curated a major conference and exhibition with the title Now is the time of monsters: what comes after nations? at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany.[11]
He was the founding literary director of the JCB Prize for Literature, initiated in 2018 by JCB, to be awarded annually with 2,500,000 Indian rupees (US$38,400) prize money, to a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer.[citation needed]
Dasgupta was awarded the prestigious Rabindranath Tagore Literary Award 2019 for his novel Solo.[citation needed]
Since 2014, he has taught each spring at Brown University where he is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.[citation needed]
↑ Dasgupta, Rana (2005). Tokyo Cancelled. London and New York: Fourth Estate/HarperCollins and Black Cat/Grove Atlantic. ISBN0-8021-7009-9. - Crown, Sarah (29 March 2005). "Narrative Planes". The Guardian.
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