Dawesar, Abha 1974-

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Dawesar, Abha 1974-

PERSONAL:

Born January 1, 1974, in New Delhi, Delhi, India; daughter of Bhushan K. and Shakuntala Dawesar. Education: Harvard University, A.B., 1995.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, executive, and artist. Works in communications. Exhibitions: Solo exhibition of art in New York, NY.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fiction fellow, New York Foundation for the Arts, 2000; Lambda Literary Award, 2005, and Stonewall Award, American Library Association, 2006, both for Babyji: A Novel.

WRITINGS:

Miniplanner: A Novel, Cleis Press (San Francisco, CA), 2000.

Babyji: A Novel, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 2005.

That Summer in Paris: A Novel, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (New York, NY), 2006.

Works have been translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Turkish, Portuguese, and Russian.

SIDELIGHTS:

Human sexuality has been the primary driving force behind the novels of Abha Dawesar. In her first book, Miniplanner: A Novel, Dawesar tells of the sexual escapades of Andre Bernard. In the novel, Andre has a sexual encounter with his male boss, Nathan, and then begins an affair with Nathan's wife. As he continues to have various affairs with both sexes, Andre must deal with the fact that he may be falling in love with Nathan. A Lambda Book Report contributor commented that the novel "would make a great French film."

Dawesar keeps her attention on romance and sex in her next book, titled Babyji: A Novel. The story revolves around sixteen-year-old Anamika, an Indian living in New Delhi who decides to study the "chemistry" of sex by embarking on three affairs with a variety of lovers: a thirty-year-old man, the family servant Rani, and her classmate Sheela. "Dawesar does an excellent job of capturing Anamika's rapid swings from puffed-up maturity to deflated adolescence and back again," wrote Melissa Price in a review on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site. A contributor to the Advocate wrote that "this novel provides a window into the dark yet illuminating corners of contemporary suburban India."

That Summer in Paris: A Novel explores a May-December romance between a grad student named Maya and Nobel Prize-winning writer Prem Rustin, who is seventy-five. The two meet on an Internet chat room and soon find themselves together in Paris, where Prem struggles to come to terms with an incestuous past relationship. Deborah Donovan, writing in Booklist, commented that the author "delivers a provocative tale of love and the literature it inspires." Entertainment Weekly contributor Jennifer Reese wrote that there is "plenty of the sharp intellectual back-and-forth that drives both this unlikely romance and Dawesar's quirky novel."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Advocate, July 5, 2005, review of Babyji: A Novel, p. S29.

Booklist, April 15, 2006, Deborah Donovan, review of That Summer in Paris: A Novel, p. 27.

Entertainment Weekly, June 23, 2006, Jennifer Reese, review of That Summer in Paris, p. 74.

Lambda Book Report, Jan 2001, review of Miniplanner: A Novel, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2006, Michael Scharf, "The Philip Roth of Indian fiction? PW Talks to Abha Dawesar," p. 42; May 8, 2006, Abha Dawe- sar, "Who Am I? Not Only Am I Identified with My Characters, but My Readers Like to Identify with Them too—and by Extension, with Me," p. 74.