Ved Mehta
Ved Mehta (b. 1934) was born in Lahore (then in India), as the fifth of seven children. His early education was in Bombay, and later in the US and UK.
Totally blind from the age of four after contracting meningitis, Ved Mehta has not let the disability deter his ambition in any way. Since his twenties, he has depended solely on his writing, producing a corpus of fictional (largely autobiographical), non-fictional and journalistic works.
The Continents of Exile is a humongous autobiographical series, consisting of 11 books and 3800 pages so far. Each book is self-contained, yet part of a chronological and thematically related sequence. At a synoptic level, it is the author’s search for his identity, while dwelling on his life as an expatriate Indian, biographical portraits of his family, and memories of a changing India.
Ved Mehta has received two Guggenheims among other honours. He lives in Manhattan, New York.
Works
- Face to Face
- Walking the Indian Streets
- Fly and the Fly-Bottle
- The New Theologian
- Delinquent Chacha
- Portrait of India
- John Is Easy to Please
- Daddyji
- Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles
- The New India
- Mamaji
- The Photographs of Chachaji
- Vedi
- A Family Affair
- The Ledge Between the Streams
- Three Stories of the Raj
- Sound-Shadows of the New World
- The Stolen Light
- Up at Oxford
- Rajiv Gandhi and Rama’s Kingdom
- Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker
- All For Love
- Dark Harbor
- The Red Letters