Hari Mohan Nath Kunzru (born 1969) is a British novelist and journalist. He is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, White Tears, Red Pill, and Blue Ruin. His work has been translated into 20 languages.

Early life and education

Kunzru was born in London, England, to an Indian father of Kashmiri Pandit descent and a British mother. He grew up in Essex and was educated at Bancroft's School. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, then gained an MA in Philosophy and Literature from University of Warwick. In his teens, Kunzru decided that he did not believe in formal religion or God, and is "opposed to how religion is used to police people".

In 2004 the "supersonic supernatural drama" Sound Mirrors was dramatised as part of the BBC Radio 3 drama strand, The Wire. It was a collaboration between Kunzru and DJ producers Coldcut.

Kunzru was awarded The John Llewellyn Rhys prize for writers under 35, the second-oldest literary prize in the UK, but turned it down on the grounds that it was backed by the Mail on Sunday whose "hostility towards black and Asian people" he felt was unacceptable.

He is Deputy President of English PEN. He also teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.

In 2009, he donated the short story "Kaltes klares Wasser" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories by 38 authors. Kunzru's story was published in the Water collection.

In 2012, at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Kunzru and three other authors, Ruchir Joshi, Jeet Thayil, and Amitava Kumar, risked arrest by reading excerpts from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which remains unpublished in India due to fear of controversy. Kunzru later wrote, "Our intention was not to offend anyone's religious sensibilities, but to give a voice to a writer who had been silenced by a death threat." The reading drew sharp criticism from Muslim groups as a deliberately provocative move to gain publicity for the four authors. Kunzru admitted in an interview that the festival organizers asked him to leave as his presence was likely to "inflame an already volatile situation."

In 2016, Kunzru visited Israel, as part of a project by the "Breaking the Silence" organization, to write an article for a book on the Israeli occupation, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The book was edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, and published in 2017 under the title Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. During the Gaza War, he announced that he supports a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals. He was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions".

Personal life

Kunzru is married to novelist Katie Kitamura, and the couple have two children. Kunzru is fascinated by UFOs and as a youngster often imagined a close-encounter experience with one.

Honours

  • 1999: The Observer Young Travel Writer of the Year
  • 2002: Betty Trask Award, The Impressionist
  • 2003: Somerset Maugham Award, The Impressionist
  • 2003: Granta "Best of Young British Novelists" (one of twenty)
  • 2005: New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Transmission
  • 2005: Lire "50 écrivains pour demain"
  • 2014: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Bibliography

Books

  • 2002: The Impressionist. London: Hamish Hamilton. ,
  • 2004: Transmission. London: Hamish Hamilton. ,
  • 2005: Noise. London: Penguin. ,
  • 2007: My Revolutions. London: Penguin.
  • 2011: Gods Without Men. London: Penguin. ,
  • 2013: Memory Palace. London: Victoria and Albert Museum.
  • 2014: Twice Upon a Time: Listening to New York. New York: Atavist.
  • 2017: White Tears, New York: Knopf ,
  • 2020: Red Pill, New York: Knopf ,
  • 2024: Blue Ruin, London: Scribner ,

Essays and reporting

References

  • "Libya's Reluctant Spokesman: Hari Kunzru interviews Hisham Matar" – Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics
  • Video of Hari Kunzru on Sky TV
  • Podcast of Hari Kunzru discussing "My Revolutions" at the Shanghai International Literary Festival
  • Podcast of Hari Kunzru reading from "My Revolutions" at writLOUD, London
  • Podcast of Hari Kunzru discussing Blue Ruin on Artnet's The Art Angle, October 17, 2024.