Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi è nato in India a juhu Bombay il 25 agosto 1977.  considerato dalla critica come un'autentica rivelazione. quello che colpisce incontrandolo è anche il suo carisma n onostante la giovane età. Infatti è stato definito dalla stampa internazionale l'uomo più elegante del mondo dopo il premier afghano Hamid Karzaj.

rainews24.it   -  grinzane.it

Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi  - born 1977 -  is an Indian author. His debut novel The Last Song of Dusk 2004 -  won the Betty Trask Award UK, one of UK's most prestigious prizes for debut novels, the Premio Grinzane Cavour Italy - for the Best Debut novel, and was nominated for the IMPAC Literary Prize Ireland.   It was translated into 16 languages, and became an international bestseller ...  honorary director of Sunaparanta, an arts foundation in Goa .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddharth_Shanghvi  bio

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Shanghvi Siddharth Dhanvant -   NOVELIST AND PHOTOGRAPHER
1977 - ha vissuto fino a 14 anni in una casa costruita sopra un albero, nella natia Bombay. Ha studiato in India, Inghilterra e Stati Uniti. A Londra, riusciva a farsi offrire da bere raccontando agli amici le storie che costituiscono il nucleo iniziale del suo primo ROMANZo . Ha scritto per diversi giornali e riviste, tra cui «Sunday Times of India», «Elle» e «San Francisco Chronicle». Tornato in India con due master in giornalismo e comunicazioni di massa, su consiglio della madre ha aperto una pizzeria a Bombay. Due mesi dopo l’inaugurazione ha inviato L’ultima canzone al suo agente. Un anno dopo, IL ROMANZo è diventato un best seller in India e Inghilterra, ed è in corso di pubblicazione in Francia, Germania e diversi altri paesi. Vive tra Bombay e la California del Nord.

garzantilibri.it

Photographs 2008-2011 - Vadhera Art Gallery Delhi - Galleri Kontrast Stockholm

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Because the language of love is music

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay
is as much a razor-sharp depiction of contemporary urban society and its obscene obsession with celebrity and sensation as it is an affecting tale about love’s betrayals and the redemptive powers of friendship. Acerbic and elegiac by turns, and potent in its portrayal of Bombay in all its allure and menace, it confirms Shanghvi’s prodigious skill and range as a storyteller.
penguinbooksindia.com - 2009

I have a feeling this will be my last book  so at least critics can sigh with relief

 
I FENICOTTERI DI BOMBAY
Ci sono momenti in cui a Bombay il cielo cambia colore all'improvviso: i fenicotteri si alzano sopra il traffico impazzito e partono, tingendo le nuvole di rosa. Dura un istante. Un attimo fugace, da cogliere al volo per chi, come il fotografo dell'«India Chronicle» Karan Seth, cerca di immortalare  la città dai mille volti in uno scatto indimenticabile. Ma per muoversi tra le strade e i vicoli più oscuri di Bombay ha bisogno di aiuto.

Ha bisogno di anime inquiete come Samar Arora, celebre e affascinante pianista che ha bruciato le tappe della sua carriera; di occhi timidi e sinceri come quelli di Zaira, bellissima stella di Bollywood; delle rivelazioni di Leo, giornalista ben introdotto fra i giovani artisti. E dell'amore di Rhea Dalal, malinconica e sognatrice, prigioniera di un matrimonio ormai stanco. Quattro destini irrimediabilmente segnati e uniti dalla tragedia: la morte di Zaira, assassinata brutalmente. È l'ossessione per la verità che porta Karan prima a lottare per smascherare i colpevoli, che si annidano tra le più alte cariche politiche, e poi, di fronte alla corruzione insanabile dello stato, a fuggire, abbandonando amici e macchina fotografica. Ma come i fenicotteri che ogni anno scappano all'improvviso da Bombay, e poi tornano ogni volta, anche Karan non potrà dire di no al richiamo della città maledetta.
Un romanzo che lascia il segno. Graffiante e originale, parla dell'India più segreta e più inaspettata e svela cosa si nasconde sotto la patina d'oro che avvolge il mondo di Bollywood, dominato dall'ossessione per la celebrità e dalla voglia di emergere a ogni costo. Un ritratto di Bombay in tutto il suo fascino e la sua minaccia, che conferma Shanghvi come uno dei più importanti e controversi giovani scrittori indiani degli ultimi anni.
garzantilibri.it

Questa è Bombay -  musa mostruosa un po' strega e un po' clown -  sempre assurda

spesso incantevole la mia ballata di vagabondo -  questa è Bombay -  la mia vita

Writing is about creating kinship
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay is the story of four friends, and how their lives are torn asunder when one is murdered. The ensuing trial was refracted to illuminate how each of their lives — and their relationships — were wrecked out of recognition. I was mindful of the narrative and what questions it was meant to serve. Chief among them: how do big public things affect us in small private ways; where do sexual desire and politics collide; how easily can we turn into the people we loathe the most?
ziya us salam - hindu.com

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L'ULTIMA CANZONE  - the last song of dusk  

storia esuberante, tenera e magica, fatta di amore e di abbandono, di affetti famigliari e destino  -  Siamo in India, negli anni Venti. La giovane Anuradha ha lasciato la cittadina del Rajasthan dov'è cresciuta per andare a Bombay, dove sposerà, secondo la tradizione, l'uomo che i genitori hanno scelto per lei, il dottor Vadhmaan Gandharva. Attraverso la vicenda di Anuradha e della sua bella ed eccentrica nipote Nandini, "L'ultima canzone" racconta una saga familiare stretta tra la magia del passato e la frenesia del nuovo, sospesa tra gli imperativi dei sentimenti e l'aspirazione alla bellezza, tra sofferenza e tenerezza.
liberonweb.com
premio Grinzane Cavour 2005 come migliore esordiente                      

Uno stile carnale e colorato. Personaggi attraversati da una vena di eccentrica follia e tuttavia credibili e umani, come il signor Bunkusdaas, il padre del cinema di Bollywood, o Libya Dass, perennemente immersa nella sua vasca di porcellana, o ancora Percival Worthington, l’aristocratico figlio del governatore di Bombay. L’ambizione di affrontare i grandi temi dell’esistenza con irriverente leggerezza e profonda compassione. Tutto questo Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi è riuscito a fonderlo in UN ROMANZo magico, esuberante e avventuroso, che restituisce il fascino di un’India sospesa tra la modernità e la tradizione.
garzantilibri.it
sfstation.com

the last song of dusk
A magnificent debut – The Wall Street Journal
Kundera has a tropical heir . . . a luminous debut – India Today
A gorgeous novel  - The Los Angeles Times Book Review
Grinzane Cavour Prize 2005
Winner -  Betty Trask Award
A Main Selection of the Book Club Association -  UK
A Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection     
A Best Book of 2004 -  San Francisco Chronicle - India Today -  Asian Age  
siddharths.com

In questa vita, mia cara, non c’è pietà

E’ l’incipt del volume ed è la frase e che la madre rivolge alla figlia Anuradha Patwardhlan quando lascia la cittadina di Rajasthan per trasferirsi a Bombay dove sposerà, secondo la tadizione , l’uomo che la famiglia ha scelto per lei, il dottor Vadhmaan Gandharva. Una frase che lo scrittore inserisce all’inizio DEL ROMANZo quasi a volere mettere le mani in avanti , a riprova che l’esistenza umana è un percorso doloroso. Alla protagonista della vicenda la vita riserverà infatti un atroce dolore:la morte del figlio Mohan precipitato da una finestra e la nascita di un secondo figlio Skloka affetto dal male “triste incurabilis”.
libri.brik.it

Why is your book so sexual? Are you genuinely interested in the sexual mechanics or are you pulling a polemics card on us?
If the last 20 years of post-modernism gave us room to investigate race and gender, the next 20 years will study how we form our sexual self and how we construct gender. We’re probably at a historically significant time in the discourse on sexuality – first, that we are actually having some kind of a conversation over it; and second, that we’re redefining gender roles. What does it mean to be a man? Or a woman? Are there genders beyond the binaries of male and female? How does gender formation influence our sexuality? These are all important, political and ultimately, hopelessly personal questions I’d like to examine in the zone of a novel or of photography.

Your book is a kind of a paean to music. What role does music play in your life?
Music is the canvas upon which I imagine my stories: it’s the stuff I lay on all the ideas, the themes, the conflicts. I also use music to store scenes as well as to follow an internal narrative. I can play a certain piece of Chopin and know exactly how it connects me to a scene in The Last Song of Dusk. Music is more important to me than literature because it articulates more purely and accurately what language can only hope to accomplish.
verveonline.com

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The book that saved me
The book that saved me was the one that I wrote. Ten years ago, today, The Last Song of Dusk was published in Bombay. I wore an ill-fitting bandh-gala made by a tailor in Parle market. I had never read in public before – now I was to read before a house full of Bombay’s august, at the British Council. My family was in the audience but if I caught their eye I knew I’d be found out. My sisters had always called me ‘the boy with the mismatched socks’. But on that evening, a decade ago, my socks matched for the first time (black Anchor). My hair didn’t fail me entirely. The awful thing about putting on a public face is how your private one suffers; I worried I would no longer be the boy with the mismatched socks. Going forward, everything would match; then, I would die, or worse, flourish as a fraud. It was a risk I took without knowing then it was such an awful risk.
...
This is why I love this book – for the readers it allowed me to meet, who entered my solitude to enter their own. This is why I am so crushingly grateful for having written this book, and for having loved its characters – they kept me able company. This is why ten years later, I feel I should never have left that old tree-house - but also that it’s never too late to head back there. Because the book that will save me is the book that I am yet to write. In the meantime, this book has all been an auspicious start. Thank you, dear reader, for everything, but chiefly for the love.
Penguin publishes a 10th anniversary special edition of The Last Song of Dusk in June. Shanghvi is a Goa based writer.
firstpost.com - fb/sds - 2014

Happy birthday to The Last Song of Dusk, published today, 14 years ago, my first, and dearly beloved. Every time I think - Nothing I ever do counts for anything - I forget I was lucky to serve this novel. I’m a terrible friend to this book, especially when I tell myself that more people see kitten videos on YouTube than they are wont to reading my book.
It doesn’t matter. A broader life versus a deeper one. It’s what you get to do. La Dame de Pic, which deserves its stars, made us lunch on the Louvre because I wrote this novel. The sun shone. The river turned. Everything was, and is, just right.
fb/sds - 23.4.2018
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... I wrote The Last Song of Dusk for my mother, a gift, to acknowledge her tremendous forbearance of suffering – she lived with agonising physical pain for over three decades. She never complained.    She guided this book with her grace and listening. And I wrote this book for my father, who told me stories in our yard, under night stars; he was strict, his morals were excellent.   My childhood shimmered with pain ...
fb/sds - 23.4.2024.

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Times Literary Supplement ha scritto

Inizia come una favola erotica, e cresce fino a diventare una mappa dell'amore e dell'abbandono, della sensualità e dell'innocenza, dell'amicizia e della solitudine .
L'ambizione di affrontare i grandi temi dell'esistenza con irriverente leggerezza e profonda compassione. Tutto questo Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi è riuscito a fonderlo in UN ROMANZo magico, esuberante e avventuroso, che restituisce il fascino di un'India sospesa tra la modernità e la tradizione

bol.it

La fille qui marchait sur l'eau
La littérature indienne est l'une des plus dynamiques à travers le monde mais très peu d'ouvrages nous parviennent malheureusement dans la langue de Molière. La fille qui marchait sur l'eau de la jeune vedette montante de la littérature indienne Siddharth Dhanvant SHANGHVI est un superbe exemple de cette littérature car il nous plonge à la fois dans l'Inde du début du siècle, à travers les yeux d'un SHANGHVI définitivement branché sur les réalités de l'Inde et de ses mégalopoles surpeuplées et déchirées entre tradition et vie moderne ...
Au-delà de cette trame familiale, la force de ce ROMAN vient de sa capacité à nous communiquer les réalités de ce pays lointain par le biais des odeurs qui y sont si importantes. À travers les odeurs des épices, des agrumes, de l'air chargé d'humidité et des corps qui s'ébattent, on s'imprègne de l'environnement de l'héroïne et on vit donc ses drames avec elle. Le ROMAN de SHANGHVI explore plusieurs thématiques mais celle de la relation mère / fils est constante. La thématique de l'érotisme est également très présente dans cette culture si différente de celle des colonisateurs anglais.
S'attardant sur les états d'âme des personnages, intégrant une part de mystère quant aux dons que chacun cache en lui, La fille qui marchait sur l'eau est une belle expérience littéraire qui peut parfois paraître un peu lourde, tant le rythme est lent. Une découverte intéressante.    

sympatico.ca

La vie d'Anuradha Gandharva, de son époux, Vardhmaan, de leur fils Shloka, et de Nandini, leur fille adoptive, resplendissante et provocante, peintre et modèle, féline et prompte à marcher sur l'eau... Une histoire d'amours, de renoncements, de désirs : la saga d'une famille sur laquelle pèse la fatalité, mais qui ne cède jamais.

amazon.fr
La fille qui marchait sur l'eau

a le souffle des ROMANs qui embrassent les grands thèmes: l'amour, la perte, la vengeance, l'ambition, la passion. On y trouve la musique, la peinture, le cinéma, la littérature, le sexe mais aussi cette mélancolie indienne qui accepte son sort, regarde le monde en sachant que le destin ne se contrôle pas et qu'il vaut mieux fermer les yeux, écouter le chant du crépuscule pour retrouver les êtres chers.  

lire.fr
 

https://youtu.be/DYPAcdPCEvY the last song         postcards from the forest @ sakshi gallery 2012 youtube.com/watch youtube.com/watch?v=n2362v3KJpM

Tout a commencé pendant mon enfance dans le silence d'une cabane que je m'étais fabriquée sur un arbre de notre jardin à Bombay . A l'époque j'y passais de longues heures bercé par le feuillage .  Et c'est là pour ne pas me sentir trop seul que je me faisais mon petit cinéma en inventant toutes sortes d'histoires .    lexpress.fr

Man Asian Literary Prize 2008
It is an annual prize and is in its second year of existence.
On the news of his nomination Siddharth states   “ Nominations and awards recognise books not authors .  so I’m overjoyed for the novel ... ”
dnaindia.com

Do the comparisons with other great Indian novelists like Rushdie Desai and Roy trouble you?
I think you have to be grateful for comparisions: but you never believe them. They’re well meaning but ultimately irrelevant compliments. (In any
case, if the influences in my writing could be identified, I would not write.) And to be honest I don’t find fiction – from anyone, Indian or otherwise – particularly inspiring; my inspiration comes more from photography and music.

Only now do I find reader who tells me that a certain image reminds him of a photograph by Bresson – and then I blush.
m.ball - interview - compulsivereader.com

 

long before we ever met i was always waiting to bring you here with me The seasons have come and gone Of children dogs long walks in the woods. Of walking through squares  of old towns And finding in each other Surprise and common mood A fatigue for the world. And then wondering when it would be ok To leave to return  and to stay. But not be Asked any questions  whose Answers would furnish disappointment. When will the hour  return to innocence which was only ever the opposite of exhaustion ? fb/sds - 2013

We are marred by Each other’s Excellence in failing in finding the right thing to say When no one is listening, in accepting That we will never be safe Without close rumor of one another. In finding that Our rages are shattered Like clay Against our love. With which we build Dioramas of the future Containing an absence of you And of me. Come back. * Perhaps I’m happier alone Even when I’m here I think of you there. Maybe it’s for the best - This bottle would never have lasted two. I drink to you And I drink for you. It was wonderful while it lasted And just as well after it didn’t.

clicca per ingrandire DA BAZAAR_ICONIC  - fb/sds 1.7.2017   Letters to My Unwitting Spouses     .pdf Of promiscuous readers and persistent writers      .pdf NOTES ON TRAVEL, LOSS AND FORGETTING       .pdf ANJUNA NIGHTS   .pdf Anjuna Nights Set in north Goa, a former model and a failed writer take turns to answer a question I privately grappled: Who can you believe? Years ago, Maya Angelou said that when people tell you who they are, you must believe them. But today, we celebrate fictionalizing life - social media is triumph of fiction over fact, as is politics, of course. Sohini, in Anjuna Nights, is not so much an unreliable dinner companion as someone for who the divide between fiction and fact naturally blurs, sometimes deliberately, sometimes because she just can't help it     ... SDS fb/sds - 18.1.2020 - Are you okay ?  - Sohini asked me, when she saw I hadn’t eaten any of the prawn mappas on my plate. - I’m not hungry,  I said  .    - I’ll have this to go    .   Behind us, the group of men erupted in laughter .   If this made me awkward, I wondered how she coped .    - Shall we go  ? ... - I guess you just have to let people be  ... You can’t judge all the time ... - your humanity,   she said, folding her arms,  -is giving me a headache . livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/anjuna-nights - 2020 .

bolt the door hide under the bed the fraud are here to charge you wuth happiness to remind you everything is fine - it is not - to arrest yoour blues with tincture. the frauds are here to steal your quiet your books your friends & the last lovely thing in your larder . the orange you were to use to make a royal jam for us bit they took it from us a taste of the sky only the orange kept the green of its orchard the breeze the earth and some more of that free sky fb/SDS - 2013 rather unexpectedly and quite soon someone with an instinct for love will appear in the wild garb of a madman or she might register as sound – white surf, leaf drop. the havoc will be beautiful everything held true or original will turn to ash, as new worlds break into you ---- answering your great, purposeful longing. while once you asked for day’s end, you now grow insatiable for night. she is back to tell you she will never leave: the threshold of your touch. and she never left you as if echo could leave sound. fb/SDS - 2014	after the party after the guests had left an excellent chaos - of cups and glasses stubs and platters. neither chatter nor music insists now. and the last cab has pulled up - and gone. this house is my house. again. the silence is honest all shadows tentative i sit on the couch - the last guest - unable to remember a familiar face or uttered words that had seemed witty only moments ago. i remember and i remember - and i remember nothing. in the relief of darkness i see now the after-party had been all along the before-nothing. fb/SDS - 2013 Do you remember the night I woke you at 3 am ? Yes, we sat on the sofa in your veranda There was a silver bucket, a green bottle There was you ... I miss all that I know you do It's like life went out of me the last few months Why don't you call? Pride? Foolishness more like --- I want to sit on that white sofa at 3 am. The owls. Don't leave How could I ever leave  ? You did. That's what you thought; but I can't leave you Come back I'm here, this is my heart, dark without dark with. Take it. fb/sds - 24.12.2016
The grave danger of falling into an intimacy on account of goofy. For few knew your world as he, dim hours in hotel rooms wondering if there was home. And coming home in raring prospect of the next round of awful red in an airport lounge: where passengers raised families of loneliness. The grave danger of seeing through reading glasses the sea, the sky, other immensities ahead of language. And failing to recognize the more enduring pleasure of a fellow fool, the ally of your observations   - a man, drooling; a child, shrieking. Who from far could see what was for you near; who close might never be close enough. The grave danger of time. Years from now, outside a museum, alone. Inside, fine things under coins of fugitive light. They would both see it apart, this painting, that sculpture --- Thinking if he were here we would have laughed and laughed for there had been no grave danger, ever Only laughter, rolling from my heart and into yours. fb/sds - 2015	The House Next Door After all those years Of not quite getting along Of reading the Times Alone, together. Then your evening years of This almost closeness. For we had been the same Yet different of temper, and generosities. And now these mornings. Of easy talk, of the heart-halting moment When you say: I have prayed for you. To have been worthy of your prayer. And of our forgiveness of each other. pages from a Book I made for my Father fb/sds - 2015
My simple and true things for you - Dark skin, a vessel of soup, the warm bed. We might give each other so much more But then it might be too much. The abundance of not having it all Resides in the longing For what could have been. fb/sds - 15.9.2015	The lamp my mother picked For my father's bedside The light that burns And does not die with death Something like love But more like prayer: I see now. fb/sds - 19.11.2016

new word in the english dictionary
The one word that long deserves a place in the English dictionary is andaaz.

It is such a fine cross between the words charisma and style, and like many Indian words has no equivalent word in English till today .   Perhaps because the British find it difficult to epitomise both qualities.  -sds
dnaindia.com

Happy Birthday, to my dearest, my deeply adored, Baby B, loved from the beginning and until after forever.
fb/sds - 9.8.2015

Bobo chastising, ' What’s wrong with your hair, bro ? '
fb/sds - 13.5.2018

PAGINA    1  -  2

25 agosto  - auguri !

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