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
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.
almost family gray life paint paper
When you read Chekhov, everything has an even gray tone. When you read 'Family Life', everything has an even white tone. It is almost like when you paint on paper, and you can see the paper through the paint.
bad certain family happened hard situations suffering worse
Writing about what happened to my brother and to my family was awful. It was hard to look back at how much suffering there was and at how certain bad situations were made worse by our decisions.
parents wife wonderful
My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world, and my parents are the most extraordinary father and mother.
act confused depressed fear feelings human immigrant love true
We are all human beings, immigrant or non-immigrant. We all feel fear. We all love and become confused when we don't act as well as we would like to. We all get depressed and have feelings of uselessness. All of these things are true and have always been true.
growing-up want be-kind
It's easy when you grow up in fear to act out of fear. I don't want to embrace that fear; I prefer to be kind.
done sometimes wonder
When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why did success pass me by?
baby memories past
The little babies are missing their families from their past lives. The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies. The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they'll forget.
hurt thinking long
Why do people always think hurting others is all right, as long as they hurt themselves as well?
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.
parent pious
My parents are deeply pious Hindus.
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.
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.
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.