Chaman Nahal (1927–2013), commonly known as C Nahal and Chaman Nahal Azadi, was an Indian writer of English literature. He was widely considered one of the best exponents of Indian writing in English and is known for his work, Azadi, which is set on India's Independence and her partition. He is also known for his depiction of Mahatma Gandhi as a complex character with human failings.
Life and career Chaman Nahal was born in Sialkot, in British India, present day Pakistan, in 1927. After having done his school education locally, he did his master's in English at University of Delhi in 1948. He continued his education as a British Council Scholar at University of Nottingham (1959–61) and obtained a PhD in English in 1961. While attaining his education, he worked as a lecturer (1949–1962). In 1962, he joined Rajasthan University, Jaipur as reader in English. The next year, he moved to New Delhi as professor of English at the University of New Delhi. He was a Fulbright fellow at Princeton University, New Jersey and served as a visiting professor at various universities in the United States, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, Canada and North Korea. He was also a fellow at Cambridge College in 1991 and worked as columnist for the Indian Express, writing a column talking about books from 1966 to 1973. He died on 29 November 2013 in New Delhi, India.
List of works Novels Work Publisher Year My True Faces Orient 1973 Into Another Dawn Sterling 1977 The English Queens Vision 1979 Sunrise in Fiji Allied 1988 Azadi (Freedom) Arnold-Heinemann & BostonHoughton Mifflin 1975 The Crown and the Loincloth Vikas 1981 The Salt of Life Allied 1990 The Triumph of the Tricolour Allied 1993 The Gandhi Quartet Allied 1993
Short story collection Work Publisher Year The Weird Dance and Other Stories Arya 1965
Uncollected short stories Work Publisher Year "Tons" The Statesman 1977 "The Light on the Lake" Illustrated Weekly of India 1984 "The Take Over" Debonair 1984
Others Work Publisher Year Moby Dick (for children), adaptation of the novel by Herman Melville Eurasia 1965 A Conversation with J. Krishnamurti Arya 1965 D.H. Lawrence: An Eastern View South Brunswick, NJ, A.S. Barnes 1971 The Narrative Pattern in Ernest Hemingway's Fiction Vikas New Delhi & Rutherford, New JerseyFairleigh Dickinson University Press 1971 Drugs and the Other Self: An Anthology of Spiritual Transformations Harper 1971 The New Literatures in English Allied 1985 The Bhagavad Gita Pitamber 1987 Jawaharlal Nehru as a Man of Letters Allied 1990
Bibliography
In The New Literatures in English, 1985
Critical Studies on Chaman Nahal Work Author/editor Publisher Year Commonwealth Literature in the Curriculum K.L. Goodwin University of Queensland Press 1980 Introduction to The Crown and the Loincloth A Komorov Raduga 1984 Three Contemporary Novelists:Khushwant Singh, Chaman Nahal, and Salman Rushdie R.K. Dhawan Classical 1985
Memoir Work Publisher Year Silent Life Roli Books 2005
Children's novels Work Publisher Year Akela and the Blue Monster Aruvik & Allied 2007 Akela and the Asian Tsunami Aruvik & Allied 2009 Akela and the UFOs Aruvik & Allied 2009
Literary review Chaman Nahal's writings are known to talk about India without any touch of exoticism. Azadi, his novel on the partition of India, is widely considered to be the best of the Indian-English novels written about the traumatic partition which accompanied Indian Independence in 1947 (Quoted from '’Train to Pakistan – Azadi : Vice-versa Journey'’ by Dr. Mangalkumar R. Patil). An autobiographical book, Silent Life, was originally written in English and later translated into 12 languages, including Russian, Hungarian and Sinhalese.
Awards and honours Award Year Sahitya Akademi Award 1977 Federation of Indian Publishers award 1977 Federation of Indian Publishers award 1979
References