SIDDHARTHA DEB
… an army of Gatsbys wanting not to overturn the social order but only to belong to the upper crust.
Many in India viewed them as radicals because they were demanding so much change and reform. However, Deb’s view was they only wanted sufficient change to allow them to move into the higher strata of India.
Siddhartha Deb (born 1970) is an Indian author who was born in Meghalaya and grew up in Shillong in northeastern India. He was educated in India and at Columbia University, US. Deb began his career in journalism as a sports journalist in Calcutta in 1994 before moving to Delhi to continue regular journalism until 1998. His first novel, The Point of Return, is semi-autobiographical in nature and is set in a fictional hill-station that closely resembles Shillong in India's Northeast. His second novel, Surface, also set in Northeast India, is about a disillusioned Sikh journalist. His first non-fiction book, The Beautiful And the Damned: A Portrait of the New India was published in June 2011 by Viking Penguin. He has also contributed to The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Nation, New Statesman, Harper's, the London Review of Books, and The Times Literary Supplement. He currently teaches creative writing at The New School in New York.
