Kanhu Charan Mohanty (11 August 1906 – 6 April 1994) was an Indian Odia language novelist who wrote fifty-six novels in a career spanning over six decades from 1930 to 1985.
[3]: 299 [4]: 317 He completed his schooling at Cuttack and joined an engineering college which he was forced to leave due to financial difficulties.
Bhala Paibara Sesha Katha portrays the untouchability in the Indian society and Tunda Baida depicts the relation between a widow and her younger brother-in-law and rumors spread about them by villagers.
[5]: 74–75 [6] His Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novel Kaa (Impersonation, 1956) deals with the subject of female infertility and maternal death.
Scholar Sisir Kumar Das appreciated Mohanty's authentic illustration of regions compared to actual geographical location but noted that the author has tendency to create an Utopian world while representing the human life.
[10]: 298 Shasti (1946) is considered "one of the best progressive writings in Oriya" and "one of the earliest novels to use psychoanalysis to reveal different moods and emotions of its characters".
[2][8][7]: 67 He said to have been influenced by The Woodlanders (1887) by Thomas Hardy for Shasti and by Pavilion of Women (1946) by Pearl S. Buck for Kaa (Impersonation, 1956).
Odia novelist and a pioneer member of Sarala Sahitya Sansad,[14] Pravakar Swain, noted that "[Mohanty's] books had a social commitment and sympathy for the insulted and the injured".