Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry was born on 3rd July 1952 in Mumbai, India under zodiac sign Cancer. He is an Indian-born Canadian novelist, and he has received the Order of Canada in 2015, admission to which is the second highest honor for merit in the system of orders, decorations and medals of Canada for his talent in his profession. He was brought up in Mumbai with his brother Cyrus Mistry who is a playwright and author as well. Rohinton Mistry completed his graduation from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai in Mathematics and Economics.

In 1975, he and his wife–to-be Freny Elavia moved to Canada, and they married soon and worked in a bank there and then Rohinton studied BA in English and Philosophy from Woods Worth College, University of Toronto. While studying there, he won two Hart House Literary prizes for writing great stories called One Sunday which got published in Hart House Reviews. He was the first to do so as well in the year 1985. After two years, Penguin Books Canada published eleven stories as Tales from Firozsha Baag which was later published in the USA as lessons for Swimming and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag.

His second book changed his life. Such A Long Journey, that is about a clerk in Mumbai getting involved in a fraud, published in 1991 won him the Governor General’s Award, Commonwealth Writers Prize, and Books in Canada First Novel Award. A movie has been made on the story of the novel. The book got published in 1991. His book got shortlisted for Bookers Prize and Trillium Award. The novel is translated into Swedish, German, Norwegian, Japanese and Danish.

His following book published in 1995. Called A Fine Balance, it was a fiction, about the state of emergency in India during the 1970’s. It got huge appreciation from everyone and won him the Giller Prize, Los Angeles Times Prize. A Fine Balance made into the Oprah’s Book Club in the year 2001. It became a best-seller and got shortlisted for Booker’s Prize as well. His book Family Problems talks of problems which come along with ageing to a person. He shows a connect with the Parsi community and has a sense of realism.

His books are compared to to the books by Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist and es >> Read More... , as they both have great wit and a unique style of writing. He was Awarded with the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize in 2002 and in 2003 he got the Canadian Author’s Association Award for Fiction. In 2006, he was honored with the Timothy Findley Award. He received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in the year 2012. His fans are anticipating many more novels from him.