Shashi Deshpande

Shashi Deshpande (Kannada: ಶಶಿ ದೇಶಪಾಂಡೆ) (born in 1938 in Dharwad, Karnataka, India), is an award-winning Indian novelist. She is the second daughter of famous Kannada dramatist and writer Sriranga. She was born in Karnataka and educated in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Bangalore. Deshpande has degrees in Economics and Law. In Mumbai, she studied journalism at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and worked for a couple of months as a journalist for the magazine 'Onlooker'.^[1]

She published her first collection of short stories in 1978, and her first novel, 'The Dark Holds No Terror', in 1980. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award for the novel That Long Silence in 1990 and the Padma Shri award in 2009.^[2] Her novel Shadow Play was shortlisted for The Hindu Literary Prize in 2014.^[3]

Shashi Deshpande has written four children’s books, a number of short stories, and nine novels, besides several perceptive essays, now available in a volume entitled Writing from the Margin and Other Essays.

On October 9, 2015, she resigned from her position on the Sahitya Akademi's general council and returned her Sahitya Akademi award. In doing so, she joined a broader protest by other writers against the Akademi's perceived inaction and silence on the murder of M. M. Kalburgi.^[4]

Selected bibliography

• The Dark Holds No Terrors, Penguin Books India (1980), ISBN 0-14-014598-2
• If I Die Today (1982)
• Come Up and Be Dead (1983)
• Roots and Shadows (1983)
• That Long Silence, Penguin (paperback 1989), ISBN 0-14-012723-2
• The Intrusion and Other Stories (1993)
• A Matter of Time, The Feminist Press at CUNY (1996), ISBN 1-55861-264-5
• The Binding Vine, The Feminist Press at CUNY (2002), ISBN 1-55861-402-8
• Small Remedies, Penguin India (2000), ISBN 978-0-14-029487-3
• Moving On, Penguin Books India (2004), ISBN 978-0-670-05781-8
• In the Country of Deceit, Penguin/Viking (2008), ISBN 978-0-670-08198-1
• Shadow Play, Aleph (2013), ISBN 978-9-382-27719-4

Children's books

• A Summer Adventure
• The Hidden Treasure
• The Only Witness
• The Narayanpur Incident

^[5]

References

1. SAWNET: Bookshelf: Shashi Deshpande
2. http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=46983
3. "Here's the shortlist". The Hindu. October 5, 2014. Retrieved December 24, 2014.
4. The Hindu, October 9, 2015 After Sashi Deshpande steps down, Akademi explains its silence
5. Joseph, Margaret Paul. Jasmine on a String: A survey of Women in India Writing Fiction in English

External links

• Feature on Women Writers, BBC World Service
• Review of 3 children's novels, The Hindu, Oct 13, 2006