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| Edited By: Kaartikeya Bajpai |Source: DNA webdesk |Updated: Jan 01, 2015, 04:23 PM IST
Akhil Sharma was recently in the news for being in the New York Times list of ’10 Best Books of 2014’ for his second offering, ‘Family Life’.
Born in Delhi, he immigrated to the United States during his early childhood and grew up in New Jersey and has studied in Harvard Law School, Princeton University and won a Stegner Fellowship to the writing program at Stanford. During his formative years, Sharma obsessively studied a biography of Ernest Hemingway, without ever having read a Hemingway.
Sharma’s first book 'An Obedient Father' won him the 2001 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2001 Whiting Writers’ Award.
An assistant professor in the creative writing MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark, his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Quarterly, the Best American Short Stories anthology and the O Henry Award Winners anthology.
Latest Book: Taking about twelve years to write, 'Family Life' tells the autobiographical story of a family's emigration from India to the US in the late 1970s, and how an accident that left the elder son severely brain-damaged brought them close to collapse. It is a moving story about the inevitable changes that come with displacement.
His writing career had started long back when he was fifteen and used to rehash popular science fiction stories. His first book was came out when he was just 19 and upon publication in 2001, 'An Obedient Father' picked up numerous awards, and was a highly acclaimed first novel.
Quirky Fact: Sharma, was an investment banker at Salomon Smith Barney drawing a mid-six figure salary, and works 80-hour weeks.
The author will be speaking at Zee Jaipur Literature Festival 2015
