Pankaj Mishra,Indian Author wins $ 150,000 Yale Literary Prize

Award-winning Indian Author Pankaj Mishra is among 8 writers from 7 countries who have won a $ 1,50,000 Yale University prize each in recognition of their literary achievements.

 Essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra has been selected for the prestigious Windham Campbell Literature prize in the non-fiction category, Yale University said on Saturday March 08,2014

About Pankaj Mishra

• born in 1972

• Graduated  with Bachelor's Degree in Commerce from Allahabad University and Master of Arts Degree in English Literature from JNU in New Delhi

• began to contribute literary essays and reviews to ''The Indian Review of Books'', ''The India Magazine'', and the newspaper ''The Pioneer''

• Pankaj Mishra's First Book, Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India (1995), was a travelogue that described the social and cultural changes in India in the context of globalization

• Pankaj Mishra's novel The Romantics (2000), an ironic tale of people longing for fulfillment in cultures other than their own, was published in 11 European languages and won the Los angeles Times Art Seidenbaum award for first fiction

• Pankaj Mishra's Book An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (2004) mixes memoir, history, and philosophy while attempting to explore the Buddha's  relevance to contemporary times

• Pankaj Mishra's Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond (2006), describes Mishra's travels through Kashmir,Bollywood,Afghanistan,Tibet,Nepal and other parts of South and Central Asia

• Pankaj Mishra's most recent work, From the Ruins of Empire (2012), examines the question of "how to find a place of dignity for oneself in this world created by the West, in which the West and its allies in the non-West had reserved the best positions for themselves."

The winners in the 3 categories -

• fiction
• non-fiction and
• drama 

will receive $ 1,50,000 each in recognition of their achievements and to support their ongoing work.

The 2014 prizewinners in Fiction

• Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
•  Nadeem Aslam (Pakistan)
•  and Jim Crace (United Kingdom)

The 2014 prizewinners in Non-Fiction

• Pankaj Mishra (India) and 
• John Vaillant (United States/Canada);

The 2014 prizewinners in Drama

• Kia Corthron (United States)
• Sam Holcroft (United Kingdom) and 
• No lle Janaczewska (Australia). 

All 8 writers will accept the prize in person at a ceremony at Yale on Sep 15,2014