Arup Kumar Dutta
In 2014 he was awarded the Life Time Achievement Honour by Association of Writers and illustrators for Children, New Delhi, the Indian chapter of the International Board of Books for Young People.
Along with teaching, he also started his journalistic career writing freelance satirical columns and short stories for numerous Indian magazines and newspapers.
This anti-novel debunks all the conventional elements that a novelist would otherwise employ, including a linear narrative, structural integrity, naturalistic characterization, emotional or situational conflict et al. Anagarika in Sanskrit is one who renounces society and materialism in search of truth.
However, because of his inferior intellect and he lives in Kali Yuga or "the era of untruth", he first lands up in a local lunatic asylum, but finally stumbles into "poor man's enlightenment"!
In 1228 A.D. an event occurred in the northeastern region of India, which not only changed the destiny of the Brahmaputra Valley and the surrounding mountains but also of South East Asia.
From the time Sukapha entered this region till it was annexed by the British in 1826, for nearly six centuries, his descendants reigned over a greater part of the Brahmaputra valley.
Its reign witnessed the synthesis of the disparate tribes inhabiting the Brahmaputra Valley and the evolution of a distinct Assamese language, culture and nationalist identity.
This book, The Ahoms, seeks to imaginatively acquaint readers with the saga of this fascinating dynasty and provide a glimpse of the major events during its six hundred-year rule.
Against a backdrop of tea plantation life in the 1860s and the barbarous conditions whereby migrant workers were lured and enslaved, a chain of events unfold in this epical novel, leading to an unexpected, explosive climax which turns red the green leaves of Camellia.
[10] In 1978, Dutta's first work of young adult fiction, a conservation-oriented novel titled The Kaziranga Trail, won the first prize in an international competition conducted by Children's Book Trust, New Delhi.
Acclaimed as one of the classics in Indian children's literature, at par with Anita Desai's The Village by the Sea and Ruskin Bond's Adventures of Rusty, this book not only proved to be an all-time bestseller but also won for the author the prestigious Shankar's Award in 1979, conferred to mark the International Year of the Child.
The Kaziranga Trail is featured in the "Literature of the World Series" brought out by the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun on 2 October 2001, along with books of Satyajit Ray and Ruskin Bond.
