Mahasweta Devi 1926 - 2016

Mahasweta Devi 1926 - 2016

Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to literary parents. Her father, Manish Ghatak, was a well-known poet and novelist of the Kallol movement, who used the pseudonym Jubanashwa. Ghatak's brother was noted filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak.  Mahasweta's mother, Dharitri Devi, was also a writer and a social worker whose brothers were very distinguished in various fields, such as the noted sculptor Sankha Chaudhury and the founder-editor of the Economic and Political Weekly of India, Sachin Chaudhury. Mahasweta's first schooling was in Dhaka, but after the partition of India she moved to West Bengal in India. She joined the Rabindranath Tagore-founded Vishvabharati University in Santiniketan and completed a B.A. (Hons) in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University. In 1947, she married renowned playwright Bijon Bhattacharya, who was one of the founding fathers of the IPTA movement. In 1948, she gave birth to Nabarun Bhattacharya, who became a novelist and political critic. She worked in a post office but was fired from there for her communist leaning. She went to do various jobs, like selling soaps and writing letters in English to illiterate people. In 1962, she married author Asit Gupta are divorcing Bhattacharya

Her Books

• The Queen of Jhansi (biography, translated in English by Sagaree and Mandira Sengupta from the 1956 first edition in bangla Jhansir Rani)
• Hajar Churashir Maa ("Mother of 1084", 1975; translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay, Seagull Books, 1997)
• Aranyer Adhikar (The Occupation of the Forest, 1977)
• Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire, 1978)
• Bitter Soil tr, Ipsita Chandra. Seagull, 1998. Four stories.
• Imaginary Maps (translated by Gayatri Spivak London & New York. Routledge,1995)
• Dhowli (Short Story)
• Dust on the Road 
• Our Non-Veg Cow 
• Bashai Tudu (1993)
• Titu Mir
• Rudali
• Breast Stories (1997)
• Of Women, Outcasts, Peasants, and Rebels (1990.) Six stories.
• Ek-kori's Dream (1976)
• The Book of the Hunter (2002)
• Outcast ( 2002)
• Draupadi
• In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Methuyen and Company, 1987. New York, London)
• Till Death Do Us Part
• Old Women
• Kulaputra 
• The Why-Why Girl 
• Dakatey Kahini

Awards

• 1979: Sahitya Akademi Award (Bengali): – Aranyer Adhikar (novel)
• 1986: Padma Shri
• 1996: Jnanpith Award – the highest literary award from the Bharatiya Jnanpith
• 1997: Ramon Magsaysay Award – Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts
• 2006: Padma Vibhushan – the second highest civilian award from the Government of India
• 2010: Yashwantrao Chavan National Award
• 2011: Bangabibhushan – the highest civilian award from the Government of West Bengal
• 2012: Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Sahityabrahma – the first Lifetime Achievement award in Bengali Literature from 4thScreen-IFJW.
• 2014: 1st Mamoni Raisom Goswami National Award for Literature constituted by Assam Sahitya Sabha and sponsored by Numaligarh Refinery Limited, Assam

(Source: Wikipedia)