Samit Basu is the author of
The Simoqin Prophecies,
The Manticore's
Secret and
The
Unwaba Revelations, the three parts of The GameWorld
Trilogy, a
fantasy trilogy published by
Penguin Books, India.
He currently lives and
works in Delhi
,
India.
Biography
Born
December 14, 1979,
Basu grew up in Calcutta
, where he
studied at Don Bosco School
, and later Presidency College, Kolkata,
where he obtained a degree in Economics. He dropped out of the Indian
Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
and then went on to complete a course in broadcasting and documentary filmmaking at the University of
Westminster
, London
.
Writing career
The Simoqin Prophecies was written when Basu was 22 and
published when he was 23, making him one of India's youngest
authors at the time.
The Simoqin Prophecies, written in
English, has been published in
Swedish by
Ordbilder, and
German (from
Piper
Verlag). The subsequent volumes in the trilogy,
The
Manticore's Secret and
The Unwaba Revelations were
released in 2005 and 2007 respectively. The GameWorld trilogy has
been widely well reviewed and all three books have reached Indian
bestseller lists but not made a significant impact on international
markets.
Basu has contributed to
The Harper Collins Anthology of New
Indian Writing (2004). Basu has also written short stories for
children, which appear in the
Puffin Book of Bedtime
stories (2005), the
Puffin Book of Funny Stories
(2005), 'Seven Science Fiction Stories' (Scholastic India, 2006),
'Superhero!' (Scholastic India, 2007), 'Bewitched' (Scholastic
India, 2008)
In 2006, Basu published a series of articles and interviews on
Indian
speculative fiction
called
The Trousers of Time: Possible futures of Indian
speculative fiction in English on a fellowship from
Sarai
In 2003, Basu was in
Outlook magazine's list of 16 Indian
achievers under 25.In 2007, Basu was declared, along with other
prominent young Indians such as
Rahul
Gandhi and
Vidya Balan, one of
India's most promising 'Emerging Indians' by a survey conducted by
IMRB and The Week magazine, India.
Apart from his novel writing, Basu is a
columnist,
screenwriter, documentary filmmaker and
freelance journalist writing on travel, film, books and pop
culture. He also runs a
weblog.
Basu is also a
comics writer. He worked for
Virgin Comics and continues to write
comics. His initial projects with Virgin Comics were
Devi (#3-#10) and
The Tall Tales of Vishnu
Sharma based on the Panchatantra. Basu announced on his blog
that he has co-written a comic with
X-Men and
Lucifer writer
Mike
Carey.
Writing style
The GameWorld trilogy has innumerable
allusions to literary works from all over the
world, including
fantasy fiction and
other
fiction, to tales of
superheroes and occasionally even to
movies. He draws inspiration heavily from
Indian and
Greek
mythology,
Indian folklore and
modern fantasy fiction works. Basu liberally uses puns, tangential
references, and situational humour.
Bibliography
Sources
External links
Wikis
Quiz
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