TAYLOR, Kamala (Purnaiya) 1924-2004

(Kamala Markandaya)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born 1924, in Mysore, India; died of kidney failure May 16, 2004, in London, England. Author. Taylor was a bestselling novelist who some credit with helping to introduce Western readers to the ways of life in rural India. Born to a privileged family of the Brahmin caste, she attended the University of Madras and was beginning a journalism career in India when she decided to move to London in 1948. There she met her husband and settled down to begin a career as a novelist. Writing under the pen name Kamala Markandaya, she told realistic stories about ordinary Indians living in the countryside or trying to achieve their dreams by working in city factories. Publishing ten novels in all, her most successful book was Nectar in a Sieve, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1955 and earned the author a hundred thousand dollar prize. By the 1980s, however, when magical realism was becoming popular with authors such as Salman Rushdie, Taylor's more realistic fiction struggled to gain an audience, and the last novel she published was Pleasure City (1982). Among her other works are A Silence of Desire (1960), A Handful of Rice (1966), and The Nowhere Man (1972).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, May 31, 2004, p. B13.

New York Times, May 28, 2004, p. A19.

Times (London, England), May 27, 2004, p. 41.

Washington Post, May 29, 2004, p. B6.