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Githa Hariharan Biography

(1954– ), The Thousand Faces of Night, The Art of Dying, The Ghosts of Vasu Master



Indian novelist, born in Coimbatore, educated at the Universities of Bombay and Fairfield, Connecticut. She came to writing after a career in editing, publishing, and reviewing. Her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night (1992), won the Commonwealth Writers prize for the best first novel. Distinguished by its lyrical prose style, the novel charts the precarious course of three women's journeys through the routes of Indian social norms. The Art of Dying (1993), was described by Coetzee as a collection of ‘beautifully written stories about death and its place in life’. Hariharan changed direction in The Ghosts of Vasu Master (1994), an experimental work in which the story of a retired teacher's attempt to cure a strange child of his silence is used as a frame to tell inset stories which explore themes of teaching, healing, and the deceptive nature of reality.



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Literature Reference: American Literature, English Literature, Classics & Modern FictionEncyclopedia of Literature: Bernard Gutteridge Biography to Hartshill Warwickshire