Bharati Mukharji was born in 1940 in Calcutta. After 1947, her family moved to Europe but she received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and M.A. from the University of Baroda in 1961. Then she moved to the US to receive her PhD in Comparative Literature. Once Bharati claimed that she considers herself as an American writer, not an Indian expatriate writer. But most of her writings are reflections of Indian culture and immigrant experiences. There is always a shed of cultural clash in her writings.
WORKS:
The Tiger’s Daughter, published in 1971, tells the story of Tara, the protagonist, how she struggles in American culture. The book explores the cultural shock of the common by the character of Tara. Even when Tara came back to India, she faced harassment and is intertwined with the politics in India.
Wife is the story of a dream broken housewife. It was published in 1975. Dimple Dasgupta always dreams to marry a neurosurgeon but unfortunately, she gets married to an engineer, Amit Basu. Her dream shatters and the couple moves to America. There Dimple experiences cultural shock and alienation and this leads her into madness. In the end, the story shuts down with tragedy.
Jasmine (1989). In this novel, Bharati wanted to patch up the east and west by describing the story of a seventeen-year Indian widow. Actually, Jasmine moves to America after the murder of her husband in search of a better life there However, eventually, she finds the same subjugation of women in that land also. But through the story, the author somehow wanted to show the superiority of the western world over the eastern world by portraying the journey of Jasmine from the east to west.
The Holder of the World (published in 1993). Critics think that it is a retelling of The Scarlet Letter (1850) by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. It tells the story of a contemporary American woman who is puritan and she elopes with a Hindu Raja.
SELECTED WORKS
Novels
- The Tiger’s Daughter (1971)
- Wife (1975)
- Jasmine (1989)
- The Holder of the World (1993)
- Leave It to Me (1997)
- Desinable Dughters (2002)
- The Tree Bride (2004)
- Miss New India (2011)
Short stories
- Darkness (1985)
- The Middleman and Other Stories (1988)
- A Father
- The Management of Grief
Memoir
- Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977, with Clark Blaise)
Non-fiction
- The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987, with Clark Blaise)
- Political Culture and Leadership in India (1991)
- Regionalism in Indian Perspective (1992)
Award
1988: National Book Critics Circle Award for The Middleman and Other Stories