Priya Basil's work has been translated into over half a dozen languages, and her first novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
13 Facts About Priya Basil
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Priya Basil is the co-founder of Authors for Peace and an initiator of the movement Writers Against Mass Surveillance.
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Priya Basil's work has been translated into Italian, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Croatian, and Serbian.
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Priya Basil's other writings have been published in The Guardian, and the Asia Literary Review, She is a regular contributor to Lettre International, the leading German-language literary magazine.
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Priya Basil's themes include art, Europe, democracy, migration and colonialism.
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In September 2013, Priya Basil signed the German novelist Juli Zeh's Open Letter to Angela Merkel.
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Priya Basil read this letter aloud in public on the opening day of the International Literature Festival Berlin, as part of the festival's 'Berlin Liest' initiative.
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Priya Basil is one of the group of seven international writers who wrote the appeal, gathered the first 560 signatures from world-famous writers, and organized the global launch of the appeal.
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Priya Basil spoke at Re:publica Berlin 2014, and has published essays and articles about the threat mass surveillance poses to democracy and individual freedom, including in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel and the Danish newspaper Politiken.
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In 2013,2014 and 2015 Priya Basil was one of the 20-odd recommended writers on a list which included Hannah Arendt, Arundhati Roy, Nawal El Saadawi, Herta Muller and Juli Zeh.
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Priya Basil has written extensively on Europe and the future of the European Union, and has argued about the need for an official European public holiday across all member states.
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Priya Basil grew up in Kenya, returning to the UK to study English literature at the University of Bristol.
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Priya Basil had a brief career in advertising before becoming a full-time writer.