| RICHARD CRASTA -
An Author Bio
[A short biography of the author of
The Revised Kama Sutra, Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of
Sex, Impressing the Whites, The Unauthorized India, What We All Need,
The Killing of an Author, co-author of Fathers, Rebels and Dreamers and contributor to
Eaten By the Japanese]
Richard Crasta's life, which began
in Bangalore, India, was shaped by the Catholic nuns and
priests of Mangalore, and currently hovers around New
York, Bangalore, and various Southeast Asian cities (where
he has been working on two novels and two nonfiction
books), is an unusual chapter in the cockeyed,
multicultural saga that is Indian history.
Even though he wonders what the New York Times writer was drinking when she described his
widely published novel The Revised Kama Sutra as "ultimately an American novel, both in birth and scope," the Indian-born novelist admits that America,
where he has spent over twenty years of his adult life, must accept some of the blame (or credit, as the case may be) for making him what he is today.
HarperCollins India will be
republishing his novel in July 2010, and he recalls the dreamy and in retrospect, innocent, dedication
of his 1998 American edition: "To America: the locus of most of the world's dreams, and the place where I began to call myself a writer: for allowing me to do so."
In this dedication, America finds itself in the exalted company of Mahatma Gandhi, Kurt Vonnegut, and
(perhaps to Bill Clinton's delight) the Yoni Goddess . . . |
Son of a World War II veteran and prisoner-of-war who survived a Japanese prison camp against great odds, Crasta had a strict, middleclass Catholic upbringing in Southwestern India (India being home to more Christians than Australia or Canada), often hungry and barefoot during one four-month period, spending much of his time in church praying for deliverance. (At various readings in America, readers have told him how much his Catholic childhood reminded him of theirs! )
Reading Time and Reader's Digest as a child, he daydreamed of America and of its exotic foods such as Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup and Swanson's TV dinners. A chance encounter with the books of Saul Bellow and Henry Miller, and a teenage observation that the heroines of Western movies took off more of their clothes more often and far more quickly than Indian heroines clinched his decision to escape his prudish homeland for the idealized freedom of America.
After obtaining a degree in Literature and Journalism at American University in Washington D.C., he worked for a New York literary agency and taught English at a New York college. He began his novel while taking courses at Columbia University. Provocatively and ironically titled
The Revised Kama Sutra, it was first published by Viking Penguin India, and was, briefly, a controversial sensation in the land of his birth. It was also published by a British literary publisher, and ended up being published in eleven countries in eight languages.
Having published five more books, Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex, Impressing the Whites,
What We All Need, and The Killing of an Author, and having co-authored
Fathers Rebels and Dreamers besides contributing a son's perspective to his father's memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II,
Eaten By the Japanese, Richard Crasta is presently working on two novels and two nonfiction projects.
Richard Crasta is the father of three (known) children: all
boys, and he feels guilty about thus having unbalanced the
world's sex ratio. Fatherhood is a theme that recurs in many
of his books, including, poignantly, in The Killing of an
Author.
For a fuller view of Richard Crasta, please read the Composite Interview with the Author. |
