Aanchal Malhotra

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Aanchal Malhotra
: Malhotra at a panel discussion at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2024
Born1990 (age 33–34)
New Delhi, India
OccupationAuthor
Alma materOntario College of Art & Design; Concordia University
Period2017–present
GenreIndian history
Notable works
  • Remnants of a Separation (2017)
  • Remnants of Partition (2019)
Website
aanchalmalhotra.com

Aanchal Malhotra (born 1990) is an Indian historian and writer, best known for her work on oral history and material culture of the partition of India in 1947.

Biography[edit]

Aanchal Malhotra was born in New Delhi, India, in 1990. She received a BFA degree in traditional printmaking and art history from Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, where she won the University Medal and Sir Edmund Walker Award for Graduate Studies. She completed a MFA in Studio Art from Concordia University, Montréal.

She belongs to the family of Bahrisons booksellers, founded by her paternal grandfather, Balraj Bahri, in 1953 in New Delhi.[1] She is also the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory, a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family history and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity.[2]

Writing[edit]

Malhotra's debut book Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory[3] was published by HarperCollins India in 2017, to mark the 70th anniversary of Indian independence. The project (under the same name) initially began as her MFA dissertation at Concordia University, Montréal, and included field research in India, Pakistan and England.[4] It is an attempt to revisit the Partition through personal and intimate objects that refugees carried with them across the border during their migration.[5][6][7] Written as a crossover between history and anthropology, it details the material culture of the Partition of India. It was named a Hindustan Times "India @ 70" book[8][9] and shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize, and Hindu Lit for Life Non Fiction Prize.

Outside the subcontinent, it was published under the title Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided, by Hurst Publishers in 2019.[10] It was shortlisted by the British Academy for the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.[11][12]

For the 75th anniversary of the Partition in 2022, Malhotra published a follow-up, In the Language of Remembering: The Inheritance of Partition, which focused on the contemporary relevance of the Partition in the everyday lives of Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis.[13][14] Her debut novel, The Book of Everlasting Things, was also published in 2022.[15]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Malhotra, Aanchal (11 April 2015). "How Bahrisons Delhi has been romancing books since 1953". Scroll.in. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  2. ^ Sharma, Himini (23 July 2019). "The Precious Past". The Citizen.
  3. ^ Malhotra, Aanchal (2017). Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory. HarperCollins. pp. 1–3. ISBN 978-9352770120.
  4. ^ "The stories objects tell: What survivors of the Partition of India took with them". CBC. 15 November 2019.
  5. ^ Sridhar, Lalitha (2 December 2017). "Tangible memories: Tales through objects from across the bloodied border". The Hindu.
  6. ^ Jhurani, Aarti (18 August 2019). "Five heart-wrenching books that explore the partition of India". The National.
  7. ^ Sanyal, Devapriya (October 2019). "Book review: Remnants of a separation". Contemporary South Asia. 27 (4): 564–564. doi:10.1080/09584935.2019.1689670.
  8. ^ "India @ 70: 5 books that capture India's freedom struggle, independence and partition". Hindustan Times. 14 August 2017. Retrieved 7 January 2019.
  9. ^ Parkar, Hamida. (September 23, 2018)."Ambassadors of a Journey, Deccan Chronicle. Retrieved March 28, 2019.
  10. ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: Remnants of Partition". Publishers Weekly.
  11. ^ "Historian Aanchal Malhotra's book shortlisted for British Academy's Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize". Scroll.in. 10 September 2019.
  12. ^ McKie, Anna (24 October 2019). "Interview with Aanchal Malhotra". Times Higher Education.
  13. ^ "Writing › In the Language of Remembering". Aanchal Malhotra. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
  14. ^ Jalil, Rakhshanda (10 June 2022). "Review of Aanchal Malhotra's In the Language of Remembering: The Inheritance of Partition: Conversations about memories". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
  15. ^ "Book Review: The Book of Everlasting Things by Aanchal Malhotra". www.publishersweekly.com. 26 September 2022. Retrieved 28 September 2022.

Further reading[edit]

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