Shashi Tharoor
Born
in London in 1956, Dr. Tharoor was educated in India
and the United States, completing a Ph. D. in 1978
at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts
University, where he received the Robert
B. Stewart Prize for Best Student. At Fletcher,
Shashi Tharoor helped found and was the first Editor
of the Fletcher Forum
of International Affairs, a journal now
in its 31st year. A compelling and effective speaker,
he is fluent in English and French.
Dr. Tharoor is
also the award-winning author of nine
books, as well as hundreds of articles, op-eds
and book reviews in a wide range of publications,
including the New York
Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times,
the International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek and The Times of
India. He has served for two years as a
Contributing Editor and occasional columnist for Newsweek International.
Since April 2001 he has authored a fortnightly column
in The Hindu and 'Shashi On Sunday' since January 2007 in The
Times of India.
His five non-fiction books include: Reasons of State (1981), a study of Indian foreign-policy making; India: From Midnight to the
Millennium (1997), which was cited by President
Clinton in his address to the Indian Parliament; Nehru:
The Invention of India (2003), a biography
of India's first Prime Minister, and a collection
of literary essays, Bookless
in Baghdad (2005). His three novels are
the classic The Great
Indian Novel (1989) which is required reading
in several courses on post-colonial literature; Riot (2001), a searing examination of Hindu-Muslim violence
in contemporary India, and Show
Business (1992) which received a front-page
accolade in the New York Times Book Review and has since been made into a motion picture, "Bollywood".
Shashi Tharoor's books have been translated into French,
German, Italian, Malayalam, Marathi, Polish, Romanian,
Russian and Spanish.
In January 1998, Dr. Tharoor was
named a "Global Leader
of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum
in Davos, Switzerland. He is the recipient of several
awards, including a Commonwealth
Writers' Prize, and was named to India's highest
honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi
Bharatiya Samman, in 2004. He is also a Fellow
of the New York Institute of the Humanities.
He is married to Christa, a Canadian
who is Deputy Secretary of the United Nations Disarmament
Commission, and is the father of twin sons Ishaan
and Kanishk.
Awards
and recognition
- In
1976, at age 20, he won the Rajika
Kripalani Young
Journalist Award for the Best Indian Journalist
under 30.
- In
1990, he won the Federation
of Indian Publishers-Hindustan Times Literary
Award for the Best Book of the Year for The Great Indian
Novel, which also won a Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1991 for
the Best Book of the Year in the Eurasian Region.
- In
1998, Tharoor was awarded the Excelsior
Award for excellence in literature by the
Association of Indians in America (AIA) and the
Network of Indian Professionals (NetIP).
- He
received the honorary degree of Doctor
of Letters in International Affairs from
the University of Puget Sound in May 2000.
- In
January 1998, he was named by the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as a "Global
Leader of Tomorrow".
- In
2004, he was awarded the prestigious Pravasi
Bharatiya Samman, India's highest honour
for non-resident Indians, but did not accept it
owing to UN rules prohibiting acceptance of governmental
honors.
- In
2007 he accepted the Pravasi
Bharatiya Samman award, India's highest
honour for non-resident Indians which he had been
unable to accept 4 years earlier due to UN rule
