| Ketaki Kushari Dyson | |
| Birth Name: | Ketaki Kushari |
| Birth Place: | Calcutta (Kolkata) |
| Language: | Bengali, English |
| Birth Date: | 26 June 1940 |
| Occupation: | poet, novelist, translator, literary critic, diaspora scholar |
| Subject: | Bengali, England, Indian Diaspora, |
| Education: | Jadavpur University, Oxford University |
| Genre: | Poetry, novel, essay |
| Notableworks: | Various Universe: The Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856, (1980) In Your Blossoming Flower-Garden: Rabindranath Tagore and Victoria Ocampo (1985) Notan Notan Payraguli (1983) |
Ketaki Kushari Dyson (née Ketaki Kushari; born 26 June 1940) is a Bengali-born poet, novelist, playwright, translator and critic,[1] diaspora writer and scholar. Born and educated in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, she has lived most of her adult life near Oxford. She writes in Bengali and English, on topics as wide-ranging as Bengal, England, the various diaspora, feminism and women's issues, cultural assimilation, multiculturalism, gastronomy, social and political topics.[2]
In an interview with Voice of America in 2011,[3] Ketaki Kushari Dyson spoke at length of the deep influence of Rabindranath Tagore and Buddhadeb Bosu's works in her early life and introduction to poetry. She began writing poetry at the age of four and recalls Sishu (1903), a collection of Bengali poems for children by Tagore, as the first book she read, followed by Katha-O-Kahini (1908).
Ketaki Kushari Dyson was educated in Kolkata, India at Jadavpur University, where she studied English Literature, and at The University of Oxford, UK. Her doctoral thesis at Oxford University, entitled 'Various Universe: The Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856', explores the writings of British men and women on their experiences of the Indian subcontinent from the early rule of the East India Company (Company Raj), until just before the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Indian Mutiny).
Ketaki Kushari Dyson has, remarkably, continued to write both in her native Bengali as well as in English. She has published extensively in both languages. Her body of work to date includes numerous volumes of poetry, translations (mostly of poetry by Rabindranath Tagore and Buddhadeb Bosu), collections of essays, a volume of autobiographical sketches, two Bengali novels, scholarly studies of early British colonists in India and of Victoria Ocampo, and Bengali plays (one of them translated into English). Her novel, Notan Notan Payra Guli, which was published in instalments in the Bengali magazine Desh (1981–82) was deemed an instant success.[4] In this novel, Kushari Dyson depicts contemporary life and struggle of immigrants in Britain, through the eyes of a Bengali woman.