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Vivek Shanbhag

Biography

Vivek Shanbhag

Vivek Shanbhag is the author of eight works of fiction and two plays, all of which have been published to wide acclaim in the South Indian language Kannada. The first of his books to appear in English, GHACHAR GHOCHAR was excerpted in Granta’s 2015 India issue.

Vivek Shanbhag

Books by Vivek Shanbhag

written by Vivek Shanbhag, translated by Srinath Perur - Fiction

A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar” --- a nonsense phrase uttered by one of the characters that comes to mean something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied.