- Anjana Appachana
Anjana Appachana is a novelist of Indian origin who lives in the United States. She has written a book of short stories titled "Incantations" and a novel titled "Listening Now".
Biography
Anjana Appachana was born in India of
Coorg (Karnataka) origin and educated at Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya,Delhi University ,Jawaharlal Nehru University andPennsylvania State University . Her first book "Incantations and Other Stories" was published in England by Virago in 1991 and in the US byRutgers University Press in 1992. The book was reissued in India by Penguin in 2006. The stories in it are set in the early eighties in India. One of her short stories titled "Sharmaji" was included in "Mirrorwork: Fifty Years of Indian Writing", a collection edited bySalman Rushdie andElizabeth West .Appachana received the O. Henry Festival Prize and a creative writing fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Arts in the US. Her first novel and second book is titled "Listening Now", and was published byRandom House in 1997. In it, six women tell the story of two lovers, Padma and Karan, spanning sixteen years. The novel is set in Bangalore, Delhi and Lucknow.A.P. Kamath quotes her as saying that "Writing is not deemed legitimate work by anyone. They assume that it can be put aside for anything and everything -- for housework, for house guests, for cooking... Now tell me, how many people who work outside the house do you know who would take time off from their work to cook a meal or do groceries or laundry or look after house guests? None, right?...That's because they work outside the house and because they have a regular income which apparently legitimizes their work." Appachana adds that a writer's life is comparatively more comfortable in America than in India. She lives in
Tempe, Arizona , and has a young daughter.Reviews and articles
* [http://www.indianembassy.org/ind_us/news_media/women_writing_rediff_aug_23_00.htm A.P. Kamath’s article] ( [http://www.sawnet.org/books/reviews.php?Listening+now Review] on Sawnet (South Asian Women's Network)
* [http://www.indiastar.com/mukherjee2.html Review by Meenakshi Mukherjee]
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