Manoranjan Byapari

Manoranjan Byapari
Manoranjan Byapari was born in the mid-fifties in Barishal, former East Pakistan. His family migrated to West Bengal in India when he was three. They were resettled in Bankura at the Shiromanipur Refugee Camp. Later, they were forced to shift to the Gholadoltala Refugee Camp, 24 Parganas, and lived there till 1969. However, Byapari had to leave home at the age of fourteen to do odd jobs. In his early twenties, he came into contact with the Naxals and with the famous labour activist Shankar Guha Niyogi, founder of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha at the Dalli Rajhara Mines, who were leading a revolution to reclaim lands of the tribals from feudal lords who had captured them by unfair means.
Byapari was sent to jail during this time, where he taught himself to read and write. Later, while working as a rickshawpuller in Kolkata, Byapari had a chance meeting with the renowned Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi, who urged him to write for her journal Bartika. He has published twelve novels and over seventy short stories since.
Some of his important works include Chhera Chhera Jibon, Ittibrite Chandal Jibon (memoir), the Chandal Jibon trilogy (novels) and Motua Ek Mukti Senar Naam. Until 2018, he was working as a cook at the Hellen Keller Institute for the Deaf and Blind in West Bengal. In 2014, Byapari was given the Suprabha Majumdar Prize, awarded by the Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi. He also received the Sharmila Ghosh Smriti Literary Prize in 2015. In 2018, the English translation of his memoir, Ittibrite Chandal Jibon (Interrogating My Chandal Life), received the Hindu Prize for nonfiction. In 2019, he was awarded the Gateway Lit Fest Writer of the Year Prize. Also, the English translation of his novel Batashe Baruder Gandha (There’s Gunpowder in the Air) was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature 2019, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019, the Crossword Book Award for Best Translation 2019 and the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Prize 2020. He was appointed chairman of the newly instituted Dalit Sahitya Akademi in Bengal in 2020. Several of his books will be appearing in Bengali, English, Hindi and Malayalam in 2021.
Two of his novels will be published in the USA by the independent publisher AntiBooks Club in the spring of 2022. Byapari was recently elected a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly.
- There's Gunpowder in the AirINR 399
It’s the early seventies. The Naxalbari Movement is gathering strength in Bengal. Young men and women have left their homes, picked up arms to free land from the clutches of feudal landlords and ...
- ImaanINR 399
Imaan entered Central Jail as an infant—in the arms of Zahura Bibi, his mother, who was charged with the murder of his father and who died when he was six. He left ...
-

Anthony And Sally Sampson
Anthony Sampson is a journalist and author of The Changing Anatomy of Britain. Sally Sampson is a magistrate in Britain's juvenile courts.

Burhan Sönmez
Burhan Sönmez is a novelist. He has published Kuzey (2009), Masumlar (2011), Istanbul Istanbul (2015) and translated William Blake into Turkish. He won the Disturbing the Peace award from the

Iian Pappe
N/A
Swarnalatha Rangarajan
Swarnalatha Rangarajan is Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai.
Rameshwar Prasad Bahugua
Rameshwar Prasad Bahugua teaches History at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
Shaheen Akhtar
Shaheen Akhtar (born 1962) is a well-known Bangladeshi writer.

Alf Gunvald Nilsen
Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen. His research focuses on social movements in the global South. He is the author of Dispossession and R

Kamala Das
Kamala Das is one of India's leading poets writing in the English language.