Famous Indian Authors and their Books

Famous Indian Authors and their Important Works
1 .Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Rabindranath Tagore, author of Gitanjali and Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1913 was an icon of Indian culture. He is also called ‘Gurudev’ by Mahatma Gandhi. The Nobel Prize was conferred to him especially for his Gitanjali: Song Offerings. He himself translated many of his works. He was the first Asian to get Nobel Prize. George V gave him the little of ‘ Knighthood ’ but returned it in 1919 after the Jaliyawala Baag Massacre. W.B. Yeats gave the introduction of the English version of Geetanjali which contains 103 poems.
Important Works
1. Gitanjali (Poetry) 1910 [Total – 103 Poems]
2. The Genius of Valmiki (Drama) 1881 ( Valmiki Pratibha )
3. (Drama) 1922 ( The Waterfall )
4. The Sacrifice (Visarjan) 1890 (Drama)
5. The Post Office (Dak Ghar) 1912 (Drama): Translated into English by Deb Brata Mukharjee.
2.Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949)
Sarojini Naidu (was an Indian political activist and poet. A proponent of civil rights, women's emancipation, and anti-imperialistic ideas, she was an important figure in India's struggle for independence from colonial rule. Naidu's work as a poet earned her the sobriquet 'the Nightingale of India', or 'Bharat Kokila' by Mahatma Gandhi because of colour, imagery and lyrical quality of her poetry.
mains one of her most popular poems.
Important Works
The Lady of the Lake . It was written when she was at the age of 13. The poem contains 1300 lines. The Golden Threshold (1905) Published in U.K. Consist of 40 poems. It is dedicated to Edmund Goose. The Bird of Time : Songs of Life, Death and the Spring (1912) . It consist of total 46 poems. It’s title is taken from “Omar Khayam”.
The Broken Wings Songs of Love, Death and Spring Including “The Gift of India” (1917) .Muhammad Jinnah: An Ambassador of Unity (1916) .The Feather of the Dawn (1961) Published posthumously by Padmaja. It consist of 37 poems. Journey as a Freedom Fighter
3.R.K. Narayan (1906-2001)
R.K. Narayan was an Indian writer known for his work set in the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi. He was a leading author of early Indian literature in English along with Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao.
Narayan's mentor and friend Graham Greene was instrumental in getting publishers for Narayan's first four books including the semi-autobiographical trilogy of Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher. The fictional town of Malgudi was first introduced in Swami and Friends. The Financial Expert was hailed as one of the most original works of 1951 and Sahitya Academy Award winner The Guide was adapted for the film (winning a Filmfare Award for Best Film) and for Broadway.
Narayan highlights the social context and everyday life of his characters. He has been compared to William Faulkner who created a similar fictional town and likewise explored with humor and compassion the energy of ordinary life. Narayan's short stories have been compared with those of Guy de Maupassant because of his ability to compress a narrative.

4.Mulk Raj Anand was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Anglo-Indian fiction, he, together with R. K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali and Raja Rao, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an International readership. Anand is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of classics of modern Indian English literature; they are noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and for their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. He became known for his protest novel Untouchable (1935), followed by other works on the Indian poor such as Coolie (1936) and Two Leaves and a Bud (1937).
Anand was a lifelong socialist. His novels attack various aspects of India's social structure as well as the legacy of British rule in India; they are considered important social statements as well as literary artefacts. Anand himself was steadfast in his belief that politics and literature remained inextricable from one another.
Raja Rao (1908-2006) Raja Rao was an Indian writer of English-language novels and short stories, whose works are deeply rooted in metaphysics. The Serpent and the Rope (1960), a semi-autobiographical novel recounting a search for spiritual truth in Europe and India, established him as one of the finest Indian prose stylists and won him the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964. For the entire body of his work, Rao was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1988. Rao's wide-ranging body of work, spanning a number of genres, is seen as a varied and significant contribution to Indian English literature, as well as World literature as a whole.