A Conversation with Author Ananda Devi, Winner of the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature

The Department of English & Literary Arts welcomes author Ananda Devi for a special event. The 28th laureate of the renowned Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which recognizes outstanding literary merit in literature worldwide, Devi will read from her work and discuss the writing process.

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About the Speaker

Born in Mauritius, Ananda Devi won a prize in an international short-story competition at the age of fifteen. She published her first collection of short-stories at the age of nineteen. Over the next five decades, she has become one of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean with thirty books, including novels, collections of poetry, short stories, and essays.

Published by major French publishers, she has won numerous literary prizes. Her writing is characterized by an unflinching look at violence and modern society, especially with regard to the status of women. Her characters are trapped by the contrary forces of society, religion, identity, human cruelty, and the seismic faults of history. Their only recourse, in their solitary quest, is their lucidity and humanity. Despite the harshness of her themes, Devi brings to her writing a poetry and sensuality that shines a light in the midst of the darkness she explores.

Devi has been translated into more than a dozen languages and has received decorations from Mauritius and also from France, with the title of Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2014 she received a major award from the Académie Française. The University of Silesia, Poland, conferred upon her a doctorate honoris causa. She was awarded the Neustadt Prize for her body of work in 2024. "The Guardian" recommended her novel "Eve Out of Her Ruins", translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman (Les Fugitives / Deep Vellum, 2016), among the hundred best contemporary novels in translation by women writers. ["World Literature Today"]