>AnomieBOT at 18:43, 23 January 2021

2021-01-23T18:43:57Z

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{{moresources|date=January 2021}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Chaman Nahal
| image =
| imagesize =
| caption =
| birth_date = 1927
| birth_place = [[Sialkot]], India
| death_date = 2013
| death_place = [[New Delhi]], India
| restingplace =
| restingplacecoordinates =
| othername =
| occupation = writer and professor
| yearsactive =
| spouse = Sudarshna Nahal
| domesticpartner =
| children = Ajanta kohli, Anita Nahal
| parents =
| influences =
| influenced =
| website =
| awards = [[Sahitya Academy Award]] (1977) Federation of Indian Publishers award, (1977) Federation of Indian Publishers award, (1979)
}}
'''Chaman Nahal''' commonly known as C Nahal, also known as ''Chaman Nahal Azadi'', was an Indian born writer of English literature. He was widely considered as 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11867 |title=Azadi – Some Bitter Realities of Past by Prof. Shubha Tiwari |publisher=Boloji.com |date=6 February 2012 |accessdate=17 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140416180020/http://www.boloji.com/index.cfm?md=Content&sd=Articles&ArticleID=11867 |archive-date=16 April 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He is also known for his depiction of Mahatma Gandhi as a complex character with human failings.<ref name="jrank1">{{cite web|url=http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4623/Nahal-Chaman-Lal.html |title=Chaman (Lal) Nahal Biography – Chaman Nahal comments: – Delhi, English, India, and Novel – JRank Articles |publisher=Biography.jrank.org |date= |accessdate=17 May 2014}}</ref>

==Life and career==
<ref name="jrank1"/>
Chaman Nahal was born in [[Sialkot]], in pre-Independence India, a province in the present day [[Pakistan]], in 1927. After having 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.
During his education, he worked as a lecturer (1949–1962. In 1962, he joined [[Rajasthan University]], Jaipur as [[Reader (academic rank)|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|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.{{citation needed|date=February 2018}}

==List of works==
'''Novels'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Work !! Publisher !! Year
|-
| ''My True Faces'' || [[Orient Longman|Orient]] ||1973
|-
| ''Into Another Dawn'' || Sterling || 1977
|-
| ''The English Queens'' || Vision || 1979
|-
| ''Sunrise in Fiji'' || Allied || 1988
|-
| ''Azadi'' (Freedom) || Arnold-Heinemann & Boston [[Houghton Mifflin]] || 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'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Work !! Publisher !! Year
|-
| ''The Weird Dance and Other Stories'' || Arya || 1965
|}

'''Uncollected short stories'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Work !! Publisher !! Year
|-
| "Tons" || ''[[The Statesman (India)|The Statesman]]'' || 1977
|-
| "The Light on the Lake" || ''[[Illustrated Weekly of India]]'' || 1984
|-
| "The Take Over" || ''[[Debonair (magazine)|Debonair]]'' || 1984
|}

'''Others'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Work !! Publisher !! Year
|-
| ''[[Moby Dick]]'' (for children), adaptation of the novel by [[Herman Melville]] || Eurasia || 1965
|-
| A Conversation with [[J. Krishnamurti]] || Arya || 1965
|-
| [[D.H. Lawrence]]: An Eastern View || South Brunswick, NJ, [[A.S. Barnes]] || 1971
|-
| The Narrative Pattern in [[Ernest Hemingway]]'s Fiction || Vikas New Delhi & Rutherford, New Jersey [[Fairleigh Dickinson University Press]] || 1971
|-
| Drugs and the Other Self: An Anthology of Spiritual Transformations || Harper || 1971
|-
| The New Literatures in English || Allied || 1985
|-
| [[The Bhagavad Gita]] || Pitamber || 1987
|-
| [[Jawaharlal Nehru]] as a Man of Letters || Allied || 1990
|}

'''Bibliography'''

In The New Literatures in English, 1985

'''Critical Studies on Chaman Nahal'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Work !! Author/editor || Publisher !! Year
|-
| Commonwealth Literature in the Curriculum || K.L. Goodwin || [[University of Queensland Press]] || 1980
|-
| Introduction to The Crown and the Loincloth || A Komorov || Raduga || 1984
|-
| Three Contemporary Novelists: [[Khushwant Singh]], Chaman Nahal, and [[Salman Rushdie]] || R.K. Dhawan || Classical || 1985
|}

'''Memoir'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Work !! Publisher !! Year
|-
| ''Silent Life'' || Roli Books || 2005
|}

'''Children's novels'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! 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
|}

==Literary review==
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.<ref name="jrank1"/>

==Awards and honours==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Award || Year
|-
| [[Sahitya Akademi Award]] || 1977
|-
| Federation of Indian Publishers award || 1977
|-
| Federation of Indian Publishers award || 1979
|}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nahal, Chaman}}
[[Category:1927 births]]
[[Category:Indian male novelists]]
[[Category:Indian male short story writers]]
[[Category:English-language writers from India]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in English]]
[[Category:2013 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian short story writers]]
[[Category:People from Sialkot District]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian male writers]]

Chaman Nahal - Revision history

>AnomieBOT at 18:43, 23 January 2021