JOIN USEminent Marathi litterateur Bhalchandra Nemade has been selected for 2014 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour in India, by the Jnanpith Selection Board.
The Bharatiya Jnanpith announced it here on Friday. The decision to confer the 50th Jnanpith award on 76-year-old Nemade was taken at a meeting of the 10-member selection board, headed by eminent scholar and Namwar Singh.
Nemade, whose 1963 novel Kosala (Cocoon) changed the dimensions of Marathi novel, is the fourth Marathi writer to win the honour after V S Khandekar in 1974, V V Shirwadkar alias Kusumagraj in 1988, and Govind Karandikar in 2003.
“Novelist poet, critic, academic, and a relentless advocate of the literary movements and the leader of the post-1960s Little Magazine movement, Nemade has inscribed his name prominently in the annals of Indian literature,” the selection board said in a statement announcing the award.
Nemade’s contributions to the literary form of the novel were peerless, it added. Born on May 27, 1938 in Sangavi village in Khandesh, Nemade’s debut novel Kosala won him recognition in the Marathi literary world when he was just 25 years old.
After graduating from Ferguson College in Pune in 1959, Nemade completed his Master’s degree in Linguistics from Deccan College in Pune and in English Literature from Mumbai University in 1964.
After receiving his PhD and D Lit degrees from North Maharashtra University, he taught English, Marathi, and comparative literature at Ahmednagar, Dhule and Aurangabad universities.