Meira Chand
Biography of Meira Chand :
Meira Chand, is a novelist of Indian and Swiss descent born in London. After living in countries like Japan and India, she has now made Singapore her home, and the majority of her novels are based in Japan or India. Her novels examine cultural conflict and the position of the existential outsider. From 2000-2002, she served as the chairperson for the Commonwealth Writers\' Prize for the South Pacific and South East Asia.
Meira Chand educated in London at Putney High School. She studied Art at St. Martin’s School of Art and later specialised in Textile Design at Hammersmith Art School. In 1962, she left England to settle in Japan with her Indian husband. Although she spent several years in India in the early 1970s, she afterwards returned again to live in Japan. In 1997, she moved to Singapore, where she resides currently.
Meira Chand is an associate member of the Centre for the Arts, National University of Singapore. She is involved in several programmes in Singapore to encourage and mentor budding writers and to raise awareness in the country to the joys of reading.
Her works
The themes of Meira Chand’s novels explore the search for identity. Five of her novels, The Gossamer Fly, Last Quadrant, The Bonsai Tree, The Painted Cage and A Choice of Evils, are set in Japan. Contemporary India is the location of House of the Sun that, in 1990, was adapted for the stage in London. Also set in Calcutta, India during the early days of the Raj, A Far Horizon speaks the notorious story of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Her new novel, A Different Sky takes place against the backdrop of colonial pre-Independence Singapore. The book examines an era that includes the Second World War and the subsequent Japanese occupation of Singapore, and also the rise of post-war nationalism in Malaya.
* The Gossamer Fly (1979)
* Last Quadrant (1981)
* The Bonsai Tree (1983)
* The Painted Cage (1986)
* House of the Sun (1989)
* A Choice of Evils (1996)
* A Far Horizon (2001)