Rajeev Balasubramanyam is a British young adult writer, whose short stories have been published in numerous anthologies across the world, including New Writing 12, Fugue, and The Missouri Review.
Background
Ethnicity:
Balasubramanyam's parents are from Bangalore, India.
Balasubramanyam was born in 1974 in Lancashire, England. His parents were both Fulbright Scholars to the United States, a country where Balasubramanyam spent part of his childhood.
Education
After completing his secondary education at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Rajeev Balasubramanyam went on to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. Balasubramanyam graduated from Oxford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, and then from the University of Cambridge with a Master of Philosophy in Development Studies, for which he wrote an unusual dissertation entitled ‘Literature as a Paradigm for Development.'
Rajeev also holds a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Creative Writing as part of Lancaster's 'Moving Manchester' project.
Career
Balasubramanyam's first novel, In Beautiful Disguises, was the winner of a Betty Trask Prize in 1999 before it was even published. It was later accepted by Bloomsbury and went on to be nominated for the Guardian Fiction Award, and to be shortlisted for the BBC Asia Prize. The Guardian described it as, 'Colourful, spirited and crackling with charm. It is easy to see why Balasubramanyam is already and Betty Trask Winner'. Nadeem Aslam commented that it was, 'The best first novel since I can’t remember when. I made nine pages of closely written notes on its various metaphors, insights, and similes. Brilliant!'
2010 saw the publication of Balasubramanyam's long-awaited second novel, The Dreamer, based on a short story which won an Ian St James Prize in 2001. It is the story of Shashi, a British-Asian actor who suffers a nervous breakdown and takes to his bed whereupon his dreams take on a life of their own. India Today described it as 'a meditative, haunting experiment in stream of consciousness' with 'evocative, sweetly melancholic lines sprinkled through the length of the book'.
Balasubramanyam's third novel, Starstruck (2014), consists of ten narratives in which the main character has an encounter with a famous person. It was published by the experimental publishing initiative Fiktion.
Balasubramanyam's experiences of journeying across the United States are documented in his web-diary, 'American Pilgrimage', on his website.
Balasubramanyam's works have appeared in VICE, the Washington Post, The Economist, Salon, London Review of Books, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, the Rumpus, New Statesman, The Independent, Frieze, and others.
Balasubramanyam's short fiction has been widely anthologized, most recently in McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Rumpus, and the Missouri Review, Spring 2017 which features the opening of his new novel, Professor Chandra Follows his Bliss, which came out on January 10, 2019.