Bapsi Sidhwa

Sidhwa was born to Parsi Zoroastrian parents

Peshotan and Tehmina Bhandara in Karachi and
later moved with her family to Lahore.
She was two when she contracted polio (which
has affected her throughout her life) and nine in
1947 at the time of Partition (facts which would
shape the character Lenny in her novel Ice Candy
Man as well as the background for her novel).
She received her BA from Kinnaird College for
Women in Lahore in 1957.[1]
 Bapsi Sidhwas - Childhood

Because of an attack of childhood polio, my

parents were advised not to send me to
school. 'She'll get married, have babies,' the
doctor said, 'She's not going to become a
professor or doctor, is she?'
 I was taught to read and write in English by a
tutor at home, and I allayed my loneliness by
voracious and random reading. I gave my Metric
examination privately at thirteen, and graduated
from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore in
1957. I got married at 19, had two babies.
And then, on a trip to the Karakoram Highway, I
heard the story of a young Pakistani girl who had
dared to run away from an intolerable marriage,
and had been killed in the Hindukush mountains
by her tribal husband. The girl's story obsessed
me, and I began to write. I thought I would write
a short story, but it grew into my first novel, The
Bride.
 Sidwas Tyrst with publication
An American friend sent the manuscript to Dr
Herbert Schumann, a professor of creative
writing in Washington. He found me a literary
agent at Curtis Brown.
I had no idea how miraculous it was for an
unpublished Pakistani writer to find a reputable
agent in America: let alone a publisher. Then
began the cold drizzle of rejection slips: "We love
the writing, but Pakistan is too remote in time
and place for the novel to be commercially viable
- etc."
 Since English fiction was not published in Pakistan, I
was advised by a friend who loved The Crow Eaters, to
self-publish. The typesetters did not know English and
the checked pages erupted with new The Crow
Eaters was finally published in Lahore in 1978. I
peddled the book from store to store; an experience I
wouldn't wish on anyone.
The self-published edition was sent to A.D. Peters in
England, and this time round it was accepted by Liz
Caulder at Jonathan Cape within the month. It was
published by them in 1980 and it won the David
Higham Award for first books. They published The
Bride in 1982, and it was only after Cape had published
both books that I began to write again.
Water
The American Brat
 Film adaptation: 1947- The Earth
 Other Works
Their Language of Love : published by
Readings Lahore (2013, Pakistan.)
Jungle Wala Sahib (Translation) (Urdu) :
Published by Readings Lahore (2012, Pakistan)
City of Sin and Splendour : Writings on Lahore
(2006, US)
Water: A Novel (2006, US and Canada)
Bapsi Sidhwa Omnibus (2001, Pakistan)
 Awards
American:
1986-1987 - Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe/Harvard - Mary
Ingraham Institute.
1987 - Fellow for the National Endowment for the Arts.
1991 - Visiting Scholar at Rockefeller Foundation Study
Center, Bellagio, Italy
1993 - Recipient of Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers'
Award
1999 - 2007 Served on the Board of Directors of Inprint in
Houston, and is now on its Advisory Board.
2000 - Inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame in Houston
2002 - Won the Excellence in Literature Award at the
Zoroastrian Congress in Chicago
2007 - Primo Mondello Award in Italy.
2008 - Bapsi Sidhwa is the first recipient of the South Asian
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