Vinod Kumar Shukla was born in Rajnandgaon, in central India, in 1937. For most of his working life he taught at Indira Gandhi Agricultural University, Raipur. His first publication, in 1971, was the poetry chapbook Lagbhag Jaihind (Hail India, Almost). He has since published more than a dozen books that include both poetry and fiction. Read More Among his many awards is the Sahitya Akademi Award and the 2023 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. His writing has been described by Amit Chaudhuri as “a compelling combination of strangeness, acute observation, love of life, unexpected thinking, and an air of normality that adds to the strangeness.”