The Arts - South India and Kerala - page 1001

Literature
India has a long tradition of Sanskrit literature, although works in the vernacular have con-
tributed to a particularly rich legacy. In fact, it's claimed there are as many literary tradi-
tions as there are written languages.
Bengalis are traditionally credited with producing some of India's most celebrated liter-
ature, a movement often referred to as the Indian or Bengal Renaissance, which flourished
from the 19th century with works by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. But the man who to this
day is mostly credited with first propelling India's cultural richness onto the world stage is
the Bengali Rabindranath Tagore.
One of the earliest Indian authors writing in English to receive an international audience,
in the 1930s, was RK Narayan, whose deceptively simple writing about small-town life is
subtly hilarious. Keralan Kamala Das (aka Kamala Suraiyya) wrote poetry and memoir in
English; her frank approach to love and sexuality, especially in the 1960s and '70s, broke
ground for women writers.
India has an ever-growing list of internationally acclaimed contemporary authors. Partic-
ularly prominent writers include Vikram Seth, best known for his epic novel A Suitable
Boy, and Amitav Ghosh, who has won a number of accolades; his Sea of Poppies was
shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Indeed, recent years have seen a number of
Indian-born authors win the prestigious Man Booker Prize, the most recent being Aravind
Adiga, who won in 2008 for his debut novel, The White Tiger . The prize went to Kiran De-
sai in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss; Kiran Desai is the daughter of the award-winning
Indian novelist Anita Desai, who has thrice been a Booker Prize nominee. In 1997
Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize for her novel, The God of Small Things, while Sal-
man Rushdie took this coveted award in 1981 for Midnight's Children .