Vikram Chandra is a prominent Indian-American writer. In 1996, he published his first novel titled Red Earth and Pouring Rain and this novel won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year.
Contents
Wiki/Biography
Vikram Chandra was born on Sunday, 23 July 1961 (age 60 years; as in 2021) in New Delhi. His zodiac sign is Leo. He received his schooling from Mayo College, a boarding school in Ajmer, Rajasthan. After this, he studied at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai for a short time. Later, he moved to the United States as a graduate student. In 1984, she earned a BA degree in English and specialization in creative writing from Pomona College in Claremont, Los Angeles. Immediately after receiving his bachelor’s degree, he joined the film school of Columbia University in New York. In 1987, he received an MA from Johns Hopkins and an MFA from the University of Houston.
Physical Appearance
Height (approx): 5’4″
Hair Color: Black
Eye colour: black
Family
parents and siblings
His father’s name is Naveen Chandra and he is a retired business executive. His mother’s name was Kamna Chandra. Kamna has written various Indian Hindi films and radio scripts.
Vikram Chandra with his parents and sisters
She has a sister named Tanuja Chandra who is a film producer and screenwriter. Tanuja Chandra is also a director of many Indian films. Her other sister’s name is Anupama Chopra and she is a Bollywood film critic.
Vikram Chandra’s mother Kamna Chandra with her daughters – Tanuja Chandra and Anupama Chopra.
Famous Indian Bollywood director Vidhu Vinod Chopra is the husband of Anupama Chopra and brother-in-law of Vikram Chandra.
wife and children
Vikram Chandra is married to Melanie Abrams and is a novelist. 
At the University of California, Berkeley, they both teach creative writing. Vikram Chandra lives in Mumbai and Oakland, California, United States. The couple has two daughters named Leela and Darshana.
Signature
Vikram Chandra’s signature on his novel
livelihood
While he was studying at Columbia University, he began writing his first novel, ‘Red Earth and Pouring Rain’, and dropped out of college. After 1987, he began working as a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley and George Washington University. His taught subjects are literature and writing. While writing his first novel, he also worked as a computer programmer and software and hardware consultant. He provided his services to various companies, including oil companies, non-profit organizations, and the Houston Zoo. In 1995, Penguin/India published her first novel, Red Earth and Pouring Rain, in India. In Britain, Brown was published by Faber and Faber and in the United States, by Little. Autobiography of James Skinner – The Irish King of Hansi in Haryana Vikram Chandra, a famous nineteenth-century Anglo-Indian soldier, was inspired to write his first novel.
In 1997, she published her second book, a collection of short stories titled Love and Longing in Bombay. Soon after the book’s release, it was awarded Best Book in the Eurasia Region and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The book was on the nomination list for the Guardian Fiction Prize.
In 2006, he released his next novel titled Sacred Games. The novel’s story features a policeman, Sartaj Singh, who has already appeared in his second book ‘Love and Longing in Bombay’. Sacred Games started a conflict between the major publishers of India, America and Britain to publish his novel ‘Sacred Games’.
In 2013, Vikram Chandra’s book ‘Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, The Code of Beauty’ was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award nomination. 
In 2018, his novel titled Sacred Games was adapted into a web series by Netflix. 
Vikram Chandra was featured on the cover of The New Yorker in June 1997 as India’s leading novelist. Books and articles written by Vikram Chandra have been translated into 20 languages. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. In 2016, Vikram Chandra founded Granthika Corporation, a software startup in California. It offers writing tools ranging from word processing to digitally reinventing writing and reading. It is an online editing platform where writers create knowledge while writing and transform that text into semantics.
books
- 1995: Red Earth and Heavy Rain: A Novel.
- 1997: Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories.
- 2013: Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software.
- 2018: Sacred Games Netflix Tie-in Edition Part 1.
- 2018: Sacred Games Netflix Tie-in Edition Part 2.
Facts/General Knowledge
- In late October 2000, Vikram Chandra co-wrote the film script with Suketu Mehta for the film Mission Kashmir. The film was directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and starred Sanjay Dutt, Preity Zinta and Jackie Shroff along with Hrithik Roshan.
A poster of the film Mission Kashmir
- Vikram Chandra’s mother Kamna Chandra is a writer. He began writing for television and radio in the 1950s. Kamna Chandra has written the scripts of many Hindi films including Prem Rog and 1942: A Love Story. Various drama scripts have also been written by Kamna Chandra for Doordarshan and All India Radio.
- Vikram Chandra’s sister Tanuja Chandra is a screenwriter and director of many notable films in Bollywood. Sur and Sangharsh were two of them.
- His other sister Anupama Chopra is a film critic. The famous Indian film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge written by him in 1995 was a huge hit. She is also an author who has written the book ‘Sholay: The Making of a Classic’. In 1995, this book received the National Award named Swarn Kamal for the best book on cinema.
- Chandra began reading modernist writers and books such as “The Great Gatsby” at the age of fifteen. While talking to a magazine he said,
once i started reading [the Modernists], I realized that they were doing things to me that I didn’t understand. Reading “The Great Gatsby” at age 15 in India, I knew nothing – I had no context, social or symbolic – and it still surprised me, it was so beautiful.
- According to Vikram Chandra, most of his writing ideas are sparked in the shower. In an interview, he was asked what he did when the idea of writing came to his mind while he was in the shower,
Write it down once I come out. The shower is actually my most productive work area! It introduces this meditative, calm state that allows you to explore. Sometimes problems appear suddenly. My daughters are very angry with me! They grumble about ‘How come dad takes so long to bathe!’
- In an interview, Vikram Chandra was asked if his name was confused with NDTV CEO Vikram Chandra? He recounted an amusing incident of mistaken identity,
From time to time I get emails congratulating or cursing an interview with a politician. And Vikram – the other one – told my sister that once a guest on his show had congratulated him on winning an award for Love and Longing in Bombay.”
- In an interview, Vikram Chandra revealed the research he did in writing his novel Sacred Games. They told,
Talked to sociologists, historians and policemen. The policing world I wanted to uncover became more complex as he researched it. Crime gave birth to politics and politics gave birth to religion and then national intelligence agencies. So it became 900 pages.”
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn