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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Goodreads Author

Born

Kolkata (Calcutta), India

Website

http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/

Twitter

cdivakaruni

Genre

Literature & Fiction, Young Adult, Poetry

Influences

Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich, Amitav Ghosh ...more

Member Since

March 2009

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/goodreadscomchitra_divakaruni

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her themes include the Indian experience, contemporary America, women, immigration, history, myth, and the joys and challenges of living in a multicultural world. Her work is widely known, as she has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies. Her works have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese. Divakaruni also writes for children and young adults.Her novels One Amazing Thing, Oleander Girl, Sister of My Heart and Palace of Illusions are currently in the process of being made into movies. http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/books.... Her ne Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author and poet. Her themes include the Indian experience, contemporary America, women, immigration, history, myth, and the joys and challenges of living in a multicultural world. Her work is widely known, as she has been published in over 50 magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in over 50 anthologies. Her works have been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi and Japanese. Divakaruni also writes for children and young adults.Her novels One Amazing Thing, Oleander Girl, Sister of My Heart and Palace of Illusions are currently in the process of being made into movies. http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/books.... Her newest novel is Before We Visit the Goddess (about 3 generations of women-- grandmother, mother and daughter-- who each examine the question "what does it mean to be a successful woman.") Simon & Schuster.

She was born in India and lived there until 1976, at which point she left Calcutta and came to the United States. She continued her education in the field of English by receiving a Master’s degree from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

To earn money for her education, she held many odd jobs, including babysitting, selling merchandise in an Indian boutique, slicing bread in a bakery, and washing instruments in a science lab. At Berkeley, she lived in the International House and worked in the dining hall. She briefly lived in Illinois and Ohio, but has spent much of her life in Northern California, which she often writes about. She now lives in Texas, which has found its way into her upcoming book, Before We Visit the Goddess.

Chitra currently teaches in the nationally ranked Creative Writing program at the Univ. of Houston. She serves on the Advisory board of Maitri in the San Francisco Bay Area and Daya in Houston. Both these are organizations that help South Asian or South Asian American women who find themselves in abusive or domestic violence situations. She is also closely involved with Pratham, an organization that helps educate children (especially those living in urban slums) in India.

She has judged several prestigious awards, such as the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner Award.

Two of her books, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into movies by filmmakers Gurinder Chadha and Paul Berges (an English film) and Suhasini Mani Ratnam (a Tamil TV serial) respectively. Her novels One Amazing Thing and Palace of Illusions have currently been optioned for movies. Her book Arranged Marriage has been made into a play and performed in the U.S. and (upcoming, May) in Canada. River of Light, an opera about an Indian woman in a bi-cultural marriage, for which she wrote the libretto, has been performed in Texas and California.

She lives in Houston with her husband Murthy. She has two sons, Anand and Abhay (whose names she has used in her children’s novels).

Chitra loves to connect with readers on her Facebook author page, www.facebook.com/chitradivakaruni, and on Twitter, @cdivakaruni.
For more information about her books, please visit http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/, where you can also sign up for her newsletter.
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s books

Average rating: 3.99 · 181,687 ratings · 19,902 reviews · 61 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Palace of Illusions 4.20 avg rating — 64,107 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sister of My Heart (Anju and Sudha #1) 4.01 avg rating — 21,283 ratings — published 2000 — 53 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Forest of Enchantments 4.22 avg rating — 18,191 ratings — published 2019 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Mistress of Spices 3.48 avg rating — 14,832 ratings — published 1997 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Independence 4.11 avg rating — 11,972 ratings — published 2023 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Last Queen 4.09 avg rating — 8,238 ratings — published 2021 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	One Amazing Thing 3.49 avg rating — 9,021 ratings — published 2009 — 40 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Before We Visit the Goddess 3.77 avg rating — 7,059 ratings — published 2016 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Oleander Girl 3.72 avg rating — 5,613 ratings — published 2013 — 31 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Arranged Marriage 3.76 avg rating — 5,514 ratings — published 1995 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Blog

A FUN, FREE BOOK EVENT COMING UP ON SUNDAY, SEPT 21, IN HOUSTON, AT THE ARYA SAMAJ

SCAN THE IMAGE ABOVE TO REGISTER—OR GO TO THIS LINK: https://form.jotform.com/davss/storiesartinsights

Hope to see you there, friends! Children are also welcome.

Series by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Anju and Sudha (2 books)
by

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Goodreads Author)

3.93 avg rating — 25,543 ratings

Brotherhood of the Conch (3 books)
by

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Goodreads Author)

3.79 avg rating — 2,994 ratings

Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. To create our...

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Chitra Divakaruni is currently reading

The Gene: An Intimate History

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Apr 20, 2017 09:12PM

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Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)

by Hilary Mantel

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May 09, 2016 03:07PM

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The Tiger's Wife

by Téa Obreht (Goodreads Author)

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May 09, 2016 03:06PM

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wrote a new blog post A FUN, FREE BOOK EVENT COMING UP ON SUNDAY, SEPT 21, IN HOUSTON, AT THE ARYA SAMAJ SCAN THE IMAGE ABOVE TO REGISTER—OR GO TO THIS LINK: https://form.jotform.com/davss/storie... to see you there, friends! Children are also welcome. Read more of this blog post »
Sep 15, 2025 12:02AM · 3 likes · like

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Quotes by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (?)

“Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

191 likes

“I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so, only I never knew it!”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

tags: inspirational

121 likes

“Can't you ever be serious?' I said, mortified.
'It's difficult,' he said. 'There's so little in life that's worth it.”
― Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Palace of Illusions

tags: divakaruni, krishna, life, palace-of-illusions, panchaali, seriousness

120 likes

See all Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's quotes »

Polls

November 2011 Indian Group Book Reads:
Dear friends, do vote for your favorite among these. You have till October 20th. The winner will be discussed next month, the discussion being lead by the member who recommended the same

The Palace of Illusions-Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

6 votes, 54.5%

Chanakya's Chant-Ashwin Sanghi

4 votes, 36.4%

Paro: Dreams of Passion-Namita Gokhale

1 vote, 9.1%

11 total votes

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