Siddhartha Deb

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Siddhartha Deb is a novelist who was born in northeastern India in 1970. His first novel, The Point of Return (Ecco, 2002), was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second novel, An Outline of the Republic (Ecco, 2005), was a finalist for the Hutch Crossword Award in India and a book of the year in the London Daily Telegraph. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the New School and is currently working on narrative nonfiction about contemporary India.

At Radcliffe, Deb plans to finish his nonfiction book, which focuses on five characters who represent remarkably different slices of contemporary Indian society. Although the book is based on extensive reporting, especially in rural areas, border zones, and working-class enclaves that receive little attention in India and the West, Deb intends to approach his subjects as an imaginative writer, exploring issues of wealth, poverty, identity, and mobility through narrative and language.

Deb has an MPhil in English and comparative literature from Columbia University. His journalism, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, Harper’s, the London Review of Books, the Nation, the New York Times Book Review, the Observer, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the recipient of grants from the Society of Authors in England and the Nation Institute.