Akhil Sharma
Akhil Sharma
Akhil Sharmais an Indian-American author and professor of creative writing. His first published novel An Obedient Father won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His second, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary Award...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth22 July 1971
CountryIndia
love people profoundly unaware
We are often unaware of how much we love the people around us. This is true for everyone. We may think that we love certain people, but we don't know how profoundly we love them.
I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir.
country leave
I think immigrants, when they're stressed, think that there's something wrong with America, when it's really just difficult to leave a country and all that you know.
america quite
I thought it was quite wonderful coming to America. I think immigration is a very difficult thing, but America is a very wonderful place.
decided feared good hoped merits novel perspective publishing taken various written
I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't.
attempt blueprint family gruesome horrible life physically
'Family Life' is a blueprint of my life. It was horrible and physically gruesome in a way the book doesn't attempt to capture. It was emotionally very bleak.
almost family gray life paint paper
When you read Chekhov, everything has an even gray tone. When you read 'Family Life', everything has an even white tone. It is almost like when you paint on paper, and you can see the paper through the paint.
book expression feels
Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.
nonfiction memoir
For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.
memories taken character
I can't have composite characters. I can't attribute dialogue to someone based simply on my memory and not based on notes taken at the time that the words were spoken.
mean writing important
I need to tell the things that are important but which don't make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.
thinking people needs
People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in terms of the label instead of the totality of the experience a novel provides.
unique thinking different
Certainly the details of our life are unique. Spending time thinking of how I am different from someone else, however, does not tend to be very productive.
writing difficult reader
It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.