Raghu Karnad is an Indian journalist and writer. He is a co-founder of The Wire, an independent news platform in India. Karnad is best known for his book Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War, which won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar and the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Non-Fiction.[1] His work often explores themes of history, politics, and culture.

Early life and education

Karnad is the son of playwright and actor Girish Karnad and Dr Saraswathy Ganapathy. He completed his schooling in Bengaluru before attending Swarthmore College in the United States. During his studies, he spent a semester at the American University in Cairo and managed to secure a meeting with Yasser Arafat.[2] In 2008, he completed an MSc in Contemporary India at St Cross College, the University of Oxford.[3]

Career

Karnad was a journalist for Tehelka Magazine in 2008. He reported on conflict and survival situations, including an award-winning cover story filed from Bhopal.[4]

He later served as the editor of Time Out Delhi. Karnad is a widely published essayist, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta and The Guardian.[5][6][7][8][9][10]

In 2019, he was one of the writers invited to the Neilson Hays Bangkok Literature Festival.[11]

In addition to print journalism, he has hosted podcasts like Friend of the Court, which examines India's landmark constitutional cases.[12]

The Wire and journalism

In 2015, Karnad was part of the founding team of The Wire (India), and later held the position of Chief of Bureau in New Delhi[13] including during India's 2019 general elections. He has written, produced, and presented video essays for TheWire, and a short documentary film titled Encounter: A Killer Cop Speaks.[14]

Karnad consulted on the critically acclaimed Netflix documentary series Bad Boy Billionaires, which was partly based on his 2012 investigative essay in The Caravan.[15]

Books

Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (2015)

In 2015, Karnad published Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War, a nonfiction narrative exploring India’s role in World War II through the personal histories of his family members. The book won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2016.[16] It was also shortlisted for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award,[17] the Crossword Book Award, and the Hessell-Tiltman Prize in the same year.[18]

The book received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and historian Simon Winchester, writing for The New York Times, described it as “so heart-stoppingly beautiful I want all around to read it too.”[19]

A Marathi translation was published in 2015 by Karuna Gokhale through Rajhans Prakashan.[20]

A precursor to Farthest Field, Karnad’s long-form essay Everybody’s Friend was published as an e-book in 2012. Historian Simon Schama, writing for The Financial Times, called it “nothing short of brilliant.”[21]

Awards

Karnad has received multiple awards for his journalism and literary work, including:

  • 2022-'23 Fellow at the NYPL Cullman Fellowship (2022–23) at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.[22]
  • Windham-Campbell Prize for Non-Fiction[1] (2019) awarded by Yale University’s Beinecke Library for Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War.
  • Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Grant (2018) for a story on tribal women, education, and dispossession,[23] published in The New Yorker as The Diverging Paths of Two Young Women Foretell the Fate of a Tribe in India.[7]
  • The Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for a writer in English (2016) for Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War.[19][24]
  • The inaugural Financial Times-Bodley Head Essay Competition (2012) for Everybody’s Friend: Looking for the Second World War in India’s North-East.
  • The Lorenzo Natali Journalism Prize (2008) by the European Commission in Strasbourg for his reporting in Air, Water, Earth and the Sins of the Powerful. [25]
  • The Press Institute of India National Award for Reporting on the Victims of Armed Conflict in 2008 for The Hunting Party Returns.

Bibliography

  • Everybody's Friend. Random House. 4 March 2013. ISBN 978-1448181650.
  • Farthest Field – An Indian Story of the Second World War. William Collins. 2015. ISBN 978-0008133238.

References

  1. ^ a b "Raghu Karnad". Windham–Campbell Literature Prizes. March 12, 2019. Archived from the original on January 7, 2023. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
  2. ^ "Charge to Raghu Karnad". 8 July 2014. Archived from the original on 15 December 2018. Retrieved 12 December 2018.
  3. ^ "Alumni News: Alumnus Raghu Karnad Selected for Prestigious Fellowship". St Cross College. Archived from the original on December 22, 2024. Retrieved 30 March 2025.
  4. ^ "Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine". 2011-03-07. Archived from the original on 7 March 2011. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  5. ^ Karnad, Raghu (2020-04-13). "The Coronavirus offers a Radical New Vision for India's Cities". Archived from the original on 2020-05-15. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  6. ^ Karnad, Raghu (2019-05-22). "In Kashmir, Indian Democracy Loses Ground to Millenial Militancy". Archived from the original on 2020-10-25. Retrieved 2020-05-13.
  7. ^ a b Karnad, Raghu; Datto, Arko (2018-09-07). "The Diverging Paths of Two Young Women Foretell the Fate of a Tribe in India". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Archived from the original on 2020-01-11. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
  8. ^ Karnad, Raghu (2017-12-16). "Sonia Gandhi Leaves the Stage". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2020-03-18. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
  9. ^ "The Ghost in the Kimono". Granta Magazine. 2015-03-04. Archived from the original on 2020-12-02. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
  10. ^ Karnad, Raghu; Jajo, Grace (2016-07-21). "Confessions of a killer policeman | Raghu Karnad and Grace Jajo". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 2019-12-14. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
  11. ^ "3 Dynamic Cultural Festivals Take Over Bangkok from Oct - Dec 2019". Prestige Online. 2019-10-23. Archived from the original on 2019-12-20. Retrieved 2019-12-26.
  12. ^ "Season 1". AnilDivanFoundation. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  13. ^ Choudhary, Vidhi (8 May 2015). "Former editor of 'The Hindu' to launch news website". Archived from the original on 7 June 2017. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  14. ^ The Wire (2017-12-23). Encounter: A Killer Cop Speaks | Fake Encounters | Manipur |. Retrieved 2025-02-06 – via YouTube.
  15. ^ "From the streets to the halls of power, Bangalore's liquor industry has shaped the city's destiny for more than a century". caravanmagazine.in. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  16. ^ "Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar – Sahitya Akademi". Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  17. ^ "6th edition of Tata LitFest to begin from Oct 29". India Today. 2015-10-15. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  18. ^ "Raghu Karnad's book shortlisted for Hessell-Tiltman Prize". Business Standard India. 2 March 2016. Archived from the original on 29 July 2016. Retrieved 12 June 2017.
  19. ^ a b Winchester, Simon (9 July 2015). "India's Second World War: the history you don't hear about". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 13 June 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  20. ^ Karnad, Raghu. Farthest Field [Palbharahi Nahi Hay Hay] (in Marathi). Translated by Gokhale, Karuna. Rajhans Prakashan. ISBN 978-93-86628-11-4.
  21. ^ "Long-form writing is alive and kicking". www.ft.com. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  22. ^ "Meet the 2022–2023 Fellows of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers". nypl.org USA. 12 April 2022. Archived from the original on 12 April 2022. Retrieved 13 July 2022.
  23. ^ "Raghu Karnad". Pulitzer Center. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
  24. ^ Mukherjee, Neel (5 June 2015). "'Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War,' by Raghu Karnad". The Financial Times. Archived from the original on 18 August 2018. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  25. ^ "The Lorenzo Natali Grand Prize for 2008 has been awarded to a journalist from Benin, Larisse Houssou, for an article on Darfur". European Commission - European Commission. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
Allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raghu_Karnad
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