18 Facts About Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri was born on 15 May 1962 and is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer, and music composer from India.

Amit Chaudhuri was Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia from 2006 to 2021, Since 2020, he has been at Ashoka University, India, as Professor of Creative Writing and, since 2021, is Director of the Centre for the Creative and the Critical, Ashoka University.

Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta in 1962 and grew up in Bombay.

Amit Chaudhuri's father was the first Indian CEO of Britannia Industries Limited.

Amit Chaudhuri's mother, Bijoya Chaudhuri, was a highly acclaimed singer of Rabindra Sangeet, Nazrulgeeti, Atul Prasad and Hindi bhajans.

Amit Chaudhuri was a student at the Cathedral and John Connon School, Bombay.

Amit Chaudhuri is married to Rosinka Chaudhuri, Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.

Amit Chaudhuri wrote an occasional column, "Telling Tales", for The Telegraph.

In 2013, Amit Chaudhuri became the first person to be awarded the Infosys Prize for outstanding contribution to the humanities in Literary Studies, by a jury comprising Amartya Sen, Akeel Bilgrami, Homi Bhabha, Sheldon Pollock, former Indian chief justice Leila Seth, and legal thinker Upendra Baxi.

Amit Chaudhuri's growing absorption in his surrounding is accompanied by a loosening of his grasp on memory.

Amit Chaudhuri edited the influential anthology The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature in 2001.

Amit Chaudhuri defies form; instead he has perfected an observational fiction based on insight and memory.

One of the features of Amit Chaudhuri's initiative has been a resistance to specialisation, or what he calls "professionalisation".

In 2015, Amit Chaudhuri began drawing attention to Calcutta's architectural legacy and campaigning for its conservation.

Amit Chaudhuri is a singer in the North Indian classical tradition, who has performed internationally.

Amit Chaudhuri learned singing from his mother, Bijoya Chaudhuri, and from the late Pandit Govind Prasad Jaipurwale of the Kunwar Shyam gharana.

Amit Chaudhuri performed it for the first time at Holywell Music Room, Oxford, in July 2022.

Amit Chaudhuri performed a short version of this at Smith College, Massachusetts, on 17 September 2022, and the complete version, including slow and fast khayal compositions, in Calcutta on 5 December 2022.