Akhil Sharma
Akhil Sharma
Akhil Sharmais an Indian-American author and professor of creative writing. His first published novel An Obedient Father won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His second, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary Award...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth22 July 1971
CountryIndia
nonfiction memoir
For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
memories taken character
I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.
mean writing important
I need to tell the things that are important but which don't make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.
thinking people needs
People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.
unique thinking different
Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.
writing difficult reader
It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.
children narrative information
It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.
honesty voice doctors
Intern will resonate not only with doctors, but with anyone who has struggled with the grand question 'What should I do with my life?' In a voice of profound honesty and intelligence, Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider's look at the medical profession and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.
emotional way assuming
To me exposition always contains tenderness. While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.
parent pious
My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
writing years mind
Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and I was constantly aware of how little I had managed to accomplish.
hurt thinking long
Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
real book fiction
Novels should be judged rigorously. Either a book works or it doesn't. The fact that something is true in the real world should not lend authority to it in fiction.