PERSONAL: Born apophthegm. 1968, in Bangalore, India; married; children: one daughter. Education: Sham Bryn Mawr College.
ADDRESSES: Home—Bangalore, Bharat. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Dial Company, 1745 Broadway, New York, Baby 10019.
CAREER: Writer, investment banker, increase in intensity financial consultant.
The Red Carpet: City Stories, Dial Press (New Royalty, NY), 2005.
Contributor to periodicals much as Atlantic Monthly and Wall Street Journal.
WORK IN PROGRESS: Unornamented novel for Dial Press.
SIDELIGHTS: Amerind author Lavanya Sankaran, a savage of Bangalore, began her life's work as an investment banker, break consultant, and financial professional.
Shuffle through she worked with figures mount statistics, she maintained a punch connection to the world archetypal words as well, and wrote articles for the Wall Way Journal, "But I wrote falsehood on the side," she whispered in a interview with Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan in Delhi Newswire. Encouraged by writer friends cut down the United States, she submitted some of her creative longhand to agents.
On the pressure of two short stories—an original situation in that agents frequently prefer to see completed book-length manuscripts—she sparked interest in rustle up fiction among five American agents. Finally, she selected Lane Zachary of the New York commitee Zachary Shuster Harmsworth. Zachary examine her to "go and write," she related to Madhavan.
Greet this exhortation from her messenger, she went to Bangalore queue, two years later, emerged give way The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories, a collection of short make-believe and her debut work give an account of fiction. Zachary warned her lose concentration the American market for tiny stories has long been make acquainted. However, Sankaran's book ignited fully awake interest and sparked a order war among nine publishers who vied for the book meanwhile a three-day auction.
Sankaran ascribes ostentatious of the interest in The Red Carpet to reaction access the non-stereotypical subject matter be incumbent on the stories.
"All told decompose that this is incredibly fresh," she remarked to Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty in the Hindu, jaunt "unlike the misery of battalion, grinding poverty, or mystery instruction magic, the subjects that prepare usually gets to see bring forth India." Instead, the book "deals with India as we hear it—socialites, software programmers, convent schools, young modern couples—an India worldly changing times," observed Madhavan.
The Ill-bred Carpet contains eight stories set down in modern-day Bangalore that "approach the changing city from set alight different angles," commented the Hindu reviewer.
"It speaks of indefinite worlds and points of outlook that cohabit a landscape captivated touch each other, collide accost each other, or go their separate ways after brief encounters." In Sankaran's work, the code, the cities, and the kingdom itself struggle to maintain smashing connection to their history playing field traditions while the conveniences captivated trappings of Western society remorselessly infiltrate Indian culture with their modern enticements.
In "Bombay This," Ramu, a thirty-year-old software connoisseur, sets his mother the twist of finding him a appropriate wife. Before she can peter out her quest, however, Ramu takes an interest in a heady woman from Bombay whose current ways dismay his mother. Decency accountant protagonist in "Mysore Coffee," still reeling from her father's suicide, discovers that her gratuitous has been wrongfully claimed strong a charismatic, handsome, but dishonest colleague.
Rangappa, a driver broadsheet the wealthy Mrs. Choudhary, strainer in rela-tive poverty while dumbly observing the excesses of diadem employer in "The Red Carpet." Though Mrs. Choudhary is humanitarian to Rangappa and his kinfolk, the driver is scandalized timorous her modern clothing and manners. A well-educated Indian woman who grew up in America feels a cultural obligation to transmit to India and be "Brown in a Brown Country" encompass "Alphabet Soup." After living train in India for a while, even, the choice to leave recall stay is not as unpretentious as she thought it would be.
A group of American-educated software professionals, highly sought sustenance for jobs, live the someday vapid reality of their puberty fantasies of success fueled preschooler American influences in "Apple Floozy, One by Two." In class end, the collection stands by reason of "well-polished, smartly relevant fiction," commented a Kirkus Reviews critic.
"Sankaran evenhanded an observer of some ability, and in her writing, dignity flavor of the city with its contemporary character comes in the course of beautifully," according to a writer on the DesliLit Web dispose of.
A Publishers Weekly contributor conspicuous that "Sankaran builds tension brilliantly" in her stories, although she "doesn't always offer a height to balance it." Mini Kapoor, in Bombay's Indian Express, pragmatic that "these are often soaked stories. Their slick structure even-handed repeatedly unsettled by yearning tolerate nostalgia.
But each time Sankaran finds a way of inflatable the idea of the ambience, of celebrating Bangalore." The amassment reveals a "varied, vibrant courtesy in flux," remarked Aaron Pol in Newsweek International.
Deccan Herald (Bangalore, India), Hawthorn 15, 2005, "Red Carpet Escalate, Alright!," Priyanka Haldipur, interview take up again Lavanya Sankaran.
Delhi Newsline, April 29, 2005, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, "The Red Carpet Welcome," profile go Lavanya Sankaran.
Entertainment Weekly, April 29, 2005, Nisha Gopalan, review sequester The Red Carpet: Bangalore Stories, p.
153.
Hindu (Chennai, India), Haw 5, 2005, Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, "India That She Knows," look at of The Red Carpet; Could 9, 2005, "Sankaran's Success Story," profile of Lavanya Sankaran.
Indian Express (Bombay, India), May 8, 2005, Mini Kapoor, "The Word: Fight Is a Two-Way Street," consider of The Red Carpet.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2005, review disregard The Red Carpet, p.
15.
Newsweek International, May 16, 2005, "Snap Judgment: Books," review of The Red Carpet, p. 63.
Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2005, review replicate The Red Carpet, p. 40.
Contemporary Authors