Anita Nair
Ung indisk forfatter som er bosiddende i Bangalore og udgiver sine bøger i Indien - i modsætning til flertallet af de indiske forfattere hvis bøger oversættes til dansk!
Hendes anden roman, Damekupeen (Ladies' Coupé), er også blevet flot modtaget i en række lande uden for Indien: England, Frankrig, Grækenland, Holland, Israel, Italien, Kroatien, Polen, Portugal, Serbien, Spanien, Tjekkiet, Tyrkiet, Tyskland og USA.

Hovedpersonen i Damekupeen er Akhila, en 45 årig enlig kvinde som aldrig har tilladt sig at leve sit eget liv, men været datter, søster, tante, forsørger. En dag beslutter hun pludselig at tage med toget til kysten. Undervejs stiller hun sine fem medpassagerer i kupeen det spørgsmål som har plaget hende så længe: kan en kvinde forblive enlig og lykkelig, eller må hun have en mand for at føle sig komplet?
De fem fortæller hver sin historie og giver dermed deres bidrag til et svar, og vi hører Akhilas egen historie. Vi får således et varieret billede af kvinders tilværelse i Indien i dag; samtidig viser beretningerne at de dilemmaer som kvinder oplever i forhold til ægtefælle, mor, børn, venner og arbejdsgiver i mangt og meget er de samme som andre steder i verden. Fortalt med både solidaritet og humor.
"Akhila and her friends are on the threshold of self-discovery. The manner in which Nair relates these transformations is in turn revelatory and redeeming. Her tale is light enough to relieve the tedium of a long journey and yet filled with the incantatory power to burn up the tracks, to seek a new destination. To change." - India Today
"Nair is a powerful writer... She has created what must be one of the most important feminist novels to come out of South Asia." - Daily Telegraph
"The tales unfold quietly as if we were embarking on a journey into (these women's) minds. In this treatment lies the triumph of the book."


Biografi - fra hjemmesiden
Anita Nair was born in Shoranur, Kerala in India. When she was about a month old, she was taken to Chennai, then known as Madras. She grew up in an ordnance factory housing colony in a suburb called Avadi.
When she was seventeen, her mother decided to return to Kerala and manage her family property. Anita Nair moved with her to an obscure little college in Kerala - NSS Ottapalam where she did her B.A. in English Language and Literature.
Words have fascinated her for as long as she can remember. At first, Anita Nair wanted to be a journalist. And so began her stint with ASIDE, a city magazine in Madras. Anita Nair says, "I was young and naive enough to believe thatjournalists could change the world. And so my best stories were human-interest ones.The by-line was exciting but the money wasn't." Anita Nair got married to her teenage sweet heart when she was twenty and she could no longer afford to do something that wouldn't pay the bills. And so began a series of jobs - selling real estate; exhibition design and finally copy writing. "At least I was writing, I told myself and decided to stick-on in advertising, much as I detested it," says Anita Nair. When she was twenty-four, she knew she could no longer go on like this.
"Half my life was almost over, I thought, and I still didn't have a clue as to what I really wanted to do. So I cadged a ticket from a generous uncle and flew to New York. I was seeking the meaning of my life among skyscrapers and neon signs. Then I had a plan. Two, in fact."
Plan A was to continue as a copywriter. Plan B was to write.
Plan A took off without a hitch. A rewarding career in advertising, and recognition in the form of several awards happened.
But Plan B wasn't so easy to accomplish. It needed time, patience and a great deal of passion. And a staunch belief that someday the world would want to hear what she had to say. {Never mind the rejection slips that came in so regularly.} It began with a poem 'Happenings in the London Underground' being included in an anthology brought out by the Poetry Society of India in 1992. Stories and middles started appearing in print. Her fiction was broadcast on the radio on numerous occasions. And she began to contribute regularly to the Times of India.
In 1996, a short story collection titled '' was published in June 1997. Even though Satyr of the Subway was published by a small firm, the book caught the eye of critics and readers alike. One of the reasons for its success was the cover which was designed by , a design firm.
Around that time, Anita Nair began to work with , India's first ever literary agency.
In 1998, she completed work on and in the span of a week signed up with Laura Susijn of , a literary agency based in London.
Then came The Better Man which was accepted almost simultaneously by Penguin India and Picador USA. It was a first book by an Indian author living in India to be published by Picador and the book hit the stands in 2000. Today The Better Man has publishers in France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania and Kerala, India. Ladies Coupe was published in May 2001 in India again by Penguin and already has publishers in the UK, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and Italy.
Part-time parent, part-time advertising writer and full-time epicure, she lives in Bangalore, India with her husband who works in advertising as well and their son.

Bibliografi
1997 . Har-Anand Publications - India
2000 Penguin, India. Endv. udgivet i Frankrig, Italien, Tyskland, Grækenland, Spanien og USA.
2001 . Penguin, India.
2002 - Poetry. Yeti Publishers, Kerala.
2003 Where the Rain is Born - Writings about Kerala. Edited by Anita Nair. Penguin, India.

Tilbage