Sahitya Akademi awardee novelist Kiran Nagarkar passes away

Acclaimed English-Marathi journalist and writer Kiran Nagarkar passed away on Thursday after a brief illness, family sources said. He was 77.

He had been admitted for treatment of brain haemorrhage to a private hospital where he breathed his last.

Born in a middle-class Maharashtrian family, he was educated in Pune and Mumbai.

Nagarkar's first Marathi novel was "Saat Sakkam Treychalis", (1974) which was later translated in English as "Seven Sixes are Forty".

Then followed "Cuckold" (1997) which won him the 2001 Sahitya Akademi award and catapulted him among the most respected modern post-independence Indian writers in Englsih.

His other works include "God's Little Soldier" (2006), "Ravan and Eddie" (2004) and its two sequels - "The Extras" (2012) and "Rest in Peace" (2015), and that year only, "Bedtime Stories" and then, "Jasoda" (2018). His most recent work was "The Arsonist" (2019).