Mr. Kunzru's talk is entitled "The Future of the Novel," in which he'll discuss such things as how computer 'novelists' are changing fiction and how he tries to tackle the 'new' in his own fiction.

 

“Gods Without Men, Hari Kunzru’s rather extraordinary fourth novel, has the countercultural, mind-expanding feel of a late 1960s U.S. campus hit—something by Kurt Vonnegut or Thomas Pynchon or Tom Wolfe. This is not to say it isn’t scrupulously up-to-date: on the contrary, it is set largely in the present and it dramatizes many of the big stories of our time…and it does so in smart and innovative ways.” —The Guardian

 

British/Indian writer Hari Kunzru’s writing explores the controversial legacies of colonialism and empire, and the impact of today’s globalized world on the formation of identity. The first of his four novels, The Impressionist (2002), explicitly recalls the tales of the British Empire by Forster, Waugh, and Kipling, but from the very different, 21^st-century perspective. His other novels include Transmission (2004), My Revolutions (2007), and Gods Without Men (2011), as well as a story collection, Noise (2006). His work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, New Yorker, Times of India, and Wired. As a travel writer, he has written about Japan in “Following Basho Through Tohoku” (2007), Cambodia in “Cambodia: Out of the Shadows” (2007), and Shanghai in “See You in Coca-Cola Happiness Factory” (2010).

 

Kunzru has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Betty Trask Prize of the Society of Authors, a Pushcart Prize, and a British Book Award. In 2003 Granta named him one of its 20 best young British novelists. He is Deputy President of English PEN, a patron of the Refugee Council, and a member of Mute magazine's editorial board. He currently lives in New York City.