Mohan Bhandari (14 February 1937 – 26 November 2021) was a Punjabi writer who received the

Sahitya Akademi Award The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...

in 1998, but later returned it in 2015.

Life and career

Mohan Bhandari was born in 1937 in the Banbhaura village of

Sangrur district Sangrur district is in the state of Punjab in northern India. Sangrur city is the district headquarters. It is one of the five districts in Patiala Division in the Indian state of Punjab. Neighbouring districts are Malerkotla (north), Barna ...

Punjab Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...

. Bhandari was influenced by

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

writer Manto alongside Russian authors including Gorky,

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influenti ...

Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using pre-reform Russian orthography. ; ), usually referr ...

and

Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

. He is credited with as many as 15 short story collection books which include critically acclaimed ''Kaath di Latt'', ''Til-Chouli'', ''Gora Basha'' among others. Bhandari received

in 1998 for his collection of short stories, ''Moon di Akh''. Bhandari died on 26 November 2021 at the age of 84 in Chandigarh.

References

People from Sangrur district 1937 births 2021 deaths Writers from Punjab, India Recipients of the Sahitya Akademi Award in Punjabi 20th-century Indian short story writers {{India-poet-stub