| Chaman Nahal | |
| Birth Date: | 1927 |
| Birth Place: | Sialkot, India |
| Death Date: | 2013 |
| Death Place: | New Delhi, India |
| Occupation: | writer and professor |
| Spouse: | Sudarshna Nahal |
| Children: | Ajanta kohli, Anita Nahal |
| Awards: | Sahitya Academy Award (1977) Federation of Indian Publishers award, (1977) Federation of Indian Publishers award, (1979) |
Chaman Nahal commonly known as C Nahal, and Chaman Nahal Azadi, was an Indian born writer of English literature. He was widely considered one of the best exponents of Indian writing in English and is known for his work, Azadi, which is set on India's Independence and her partition.[1] He is also known for his depiction of Mahatma Gandhi as a complex character with human failings.
Chaman Nahal was born in Sialkot, in pre-Independence India, a province in the present day Pakistan, in 1927. After having done his school education locally, he did his master's in English at University of Delhi in 1948. He continued his education as a British Council Scholar at University of Nottingham (1959–61) and obtained a PhD in English in 1961.While attaining his education, he worked as a lecturer (1949–1962). In 1962, he joined Rajasthan University, Jaipur as reader in English. The next year, he moved to New Delhi as professor of English at the University of New Delhi.He was a Fulbright fellow at Princeton University, New Jersey and served as a visiting professor at various universities in the United States, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, Canada and North Korea. He was also a fellow at Cambridge College in 1991 and worked as columnist for the Indian Express, writing a column talking about books from 1966 to 1973. He died on 29 November 2013 in New Delhi, India.
Novels
| Work | Publisher | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| My True Faces | 1973 | ||
| Into Another Dawn | Sterling | 1977 | |
| The English Queens | Vision | 1979 | |
| Sunrise in Fiji | Allied | 1988 | |
| Azadi (Freedom) | 1975 | ||
| The Crown and the Loincloth | Vikas | 1981 | |
| The Salt of Life | Allied | 1990 | |
| The Triumph of the Tricolour | Allied | 1993 | |
| The Gandhi Quartet | Allied | 1993 |
Short story collection
Uncollected short stories
| Work | Publisher | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Tons" | The Statesman | 1977 | |
| "The Light on the Lake" | Illustrated Weekly of India | 1984 | |
| "The Take Over" | Debonair | 1984 |
Others
| Work | Publisher | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eurasia | 1965 | ||
| Arya | 1965 | ||
| D.H. Lawrence An Eastern View | 1971 | ||
| The Narrative Pattern in Ernest Hemingway's Fiction | 1971 | ||
| Drugs and the Other Self: An Anthology of Spiritual Transformations | Harper | 1971 | |
| The New Literatures in English | Allied | 1985 | |
| Pitamber | 1987 | ||
| Jawaharlal Nehru as a Man of Letters | Allied | 1990 |
Bibliography
In The New Literatures in English, 1985
Critical Studies on Chaman Nahal
| Work | Author/editor | Publisher ! | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commonwealth Literature in the Curriculum | K.L. Goodwin | 1980 | ||
| Introduction to The Crown and the Loincloth | A Komorov | Raduga | 1984 | |
| R.K. Dhawan | Classical | 1985 |
Memoir
Children's novels
| Work | Publisher ! | Year | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Akela and the Blue Monster | Aruvik & Allied | 2007 | |
| Akela and the Asian Tsunami | Aruvik & Allied | 2009 | |
| Akela and the UFOs | Aruvik & Allied | 2009 |
Chaman Nahal's writings are known to talk about India without any touch of exoticism. Azadi, his novel on the partition of India, is widely considered to be the best of the Indian-English novels written about the traumatic partition which accompanied Indian Independence in 1947 (Quoted from '’Train to Pakistan – Azadi : Vice-versa Journey'’ by Dr. Mangalkumar R. Patil). An autobiographical book, Silent Life, was originally written in English and later translated into 12 languages, including Russian, Hungarian and Sinhalese.
| Award | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| 1977 | ||
| Federation of Indian Publishers award | 1977 | |
| Federation of Indian Publishers award | 1979 |