Saddiqa khatri at 08:48, 30 April 2026

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{{Short description|Indian-born poet, novelist, playwright, translator and critic (born 1940)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2023}}
{{Use Indian English|date=June 2023}}
{{Infobox Author
|name = Ketaki Kushari Dyson
|image =
|birth_name = Ketaki Kushari
|birth_place = Calcutta (Kolkata)
|language = Bengali, English
|birth_date = {{birth date and age|df=y|1940|6|26}}
|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)
|website = {{url|ketakikusharidyson.org}}
}}
'''Ketaki Kushari Dyson''' (née Ketaki Kushari; born 26 June 1940) is an Indian-born poet, novelist, playwright, translator and critic,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=dysoke|title=Ketaki Kushari Dyson entry: Overview screen|website=The Orlando Project|access-date=8 March 2017|archive-date=27 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170727035607/http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=dysoke|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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 language|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.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Powers|first=Janet M|year=1986|title=Review: Ketaki Kushari Dyson: At Home In Multiple Worlds: Spaces I Inhabit By Ketaki Kushari Dyson|journal=Journal of South Asian Literature|volume=21|pages=230–234}}</ref>

== Early life and education==
In an interview with [[Voice of America]] in 2011,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94cfi47GO-c |title=Interview with Voice of America|website=YouTube}}</ref> 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 [[University of Oxford|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 [[Company rule in India|East India Company]] (Company Raj), until just before the [[Indian Rebellion of 1857|Indian Rebellion]] of 1857 (Indian Mutiny).{{fact|date=June 2023}}

== Career ==
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).<ref name=Cambridge/> Her novel, ''Notan Notan Payra Guli'', which was published in instalments in the Bengali magazine [[Desh (magazine)|Desh]] (1981–82) was deemed an instant success.<ref name=Cambridge>{{Cite news|url=http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=dysoke|title=A lifelong tryst with duality|last=Bhattacharya|first=Chandrima|date=23 January 2016|work=The Telegraph (India)|access-date=8 March 2017|archive-date=27 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170727035607/http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=dysoke|url-status=dead}}</ref> In this novel, Kushari Dyson depicts contemporary life and struggle of immigrants in Britain, through the eyes of a Bengali woman.

==Awards and recognition==
* [[Ananda Puraskar]] (1986 and 1997){{fact|date=June 2023}}
* Bhubanmohini Dasi Medal of the University of Calcutta for eminent contribution to contemporary Bengali letters (1986){{fact|date=June 2023}}<ref>{{cite news |title=Awards & Residencies {{!}} কেতকী কুশারী ডাইসন Ketaki Kushari Dyson |url=https://www.ketakikusharidyson.org/awards-residencies/}}</ref>
* Star Ananda Award in Bengali Literature{{fact|date=June 2023}}

== Selected work ==
=== Poetry ===
*''Bokol'' (1997)
*''Sap-wood'' (1978)
*''Shobij Prithibi'' (Bengali poems), Ananda Publishers, Calcutta, 1980'''. '''
*''Hibiscus in the North'' (English poems, pamphlet), Mid-day Publications, Old Fire Station Arts Centre, Oxford, 1979.
*''Joler Koridor Dhorey''''' ('''Bengali poems), Navana, Calcutta, 1981.
*''Spaces I Inhabit'' (English poems), Navana, Calcutta, 1983.
*''Katha Boltey Dao'' (Bengali poems), Ananda, Calcutta, 1992.

=== Novels ===
*''Noton Noton Pairaguli'' (Bengali novel), Ananda Publishers, Calcutta, 1983. (Serialized in Desh in 1981–2)
*''Rabindranath o Victoria Ocampor Sandhaney'' (Bengali novel combined with research and translation work), Navana, Calcutta, 1985. (Winner of the Prafullakumar Sarkar Memorial Ananda Prize, Calcutta, 1986.) New edition reissued by Dey's, Calcutta, 1997.

=== Academic work ===
*''A Various Universe: The Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856,'' Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1978; reprinted''':''' 1980. (Book based on doctoral work at Oxford.) New edition with a new preface, 2002.
*Ed., with Pauline Burton and Shirley Ardener, ''Bilingual Women: Anthropological Approaches to Second Language Use,'' Berg Publishers, Oxford & Providence, 1994. Distributed in the US by New York University Press. (There is a paper here by me entitled ‘Forging a Bilingual Identity: A Writer’s Testimony’.)
*''Ranger Robindranath'' co-authored by Shushovan Adhikari, Parabaash, 2001

=== Essays and biographical work ===
*''Nari, Nogori'' (Bengali, autobiographical sketches), Ananda Publishers, Calcutta, 1981. (Serialized in ''Desh'' in the sixties)
*''Bhabonar Bhaskarya'' (Bengali collected essays), Dey's, Calcutta, 1988.
*''Shikorbakor'' (Bengali collected essays from the sixties), Ananda, Calcutta, 1990.

== References ==
{{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dyson, Ketaki Kushari}}
[[Category:1940 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian poets]]
[[Category:Women writers from West Bengal]]
[[Category:Poets from West Bengal]]
[[Category:Novelists from West Bengal]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian novelists]]
[[Category:Bengali–English translators]]
[[Category:Indian emigrants to the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:Writers from Kolkata]]
[[Category:Jadavpur University alumni]]
[[Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian women poets]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian women novelists]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Ananda Puraskar]]

Ketaki Kushari Dyson - Revision history

Saddiqa khatri at 08:48, 30 April 2026