Our Bureau
Cambridge, MA
Globally celebrated Indian-origin authors, Amitav Ghosh and Jhumpa Lahiri, have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, highlighting their profound impact on the global literary landscape.
The Academy was founded in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock, and others who anticipated that the young republic would need to promote learning and share knowledge to succeed. The Academy honors and celebrates excellence by electing members; it pursues its mission to advance the common good by bringing them together across disciplines and divides to address major challenges facing our country and the world.
Amitav Ghosh has won the 54th Jnanpith Award in 2018, India’s highest literary honor. Ghosh’s ambitious novels use complex narrative strategies to probe the nature of national and personal identity, particularly of the people of India and South Asia. Studied at St Stephen’s College and Oxford University, he is the winner of many awards including Padma Shri and Erasmus Prize.
Jhumpa Lahiri, the British-American author known for her short stories, novels, and essays in English and, more recently, in Italian, studied at Barnard College, South Kingstown High School and Boston University. Her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her first novel, The Namesake, was adapted into the popular film of the same name.
While the Academy has changed greatly since 1780, its members and its work are still connected to a charter founded on ideals that celebrate the life of the mind, the importance of knowledge, and the belief that the arts and sciences are “necessary to the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” The Academy’s areas of work now include the arts, democracy, education, global affairs, the humanities, and science.
