Rajesh Kumar is the pseudonym of KR Rajagopal,
by Karthika Vasudevan; at

Dinamani ''Dinamani'' is a Tamil language, Tamil daily newspaper. The newspaper was established in 1933 and is owned by The New Indian Express Group. The first edition was published on 11 September. It is printed and published from Bangalore, Chennai, C ...

; published 26 July 2019 a Tamil author of crime fiction.

Professional career

Kumar's first published story was in 1968Meet Rajesh Kumar, author of 1,500 novels
by Samanth Subramanian; published 7 September 2008; in '' mint''; via Archive.org or 1969,50 yrs on, Rajesh Kumar still thrills his readers
by Vishnu Swaroop, in '' The Times of India''; published 18 July 2019 in the college magazine of Government Arts College, Coimbatore, where he earned a degree in botany.At 69, Rajesh Kumar - the king of Tamil pulp fiction is still at it
in '' The News Minute''; published 18 June 2015 He has attributed this to a prank by another student, who used Kumar's name when volunteering to submit a story for the magazine; when his professor refused to allow Kumar to back out,Raja of the whodunit
by Akila Kannadasan; in ''

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

''; published 25 April 2011; via Archive.org "the next day" he "reluctantly" submitted "Vaazhndhu Kaatuvom", a love story. Later that year, he submitted the crime story "Unnai Vidamaatten" to a short story contest in ''

Malai Murasu ''Malai Murasu'' ( ta, மாலை முரசு) is a Tamil language evening daily newspaper in Tamil Nadu, India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by are ...

''; this was the first story for which he was paid. In 1977, his work began appearing in '' Kumudam'', starting with the short story "Idhu Nyayama". His first novel, ''Vaadagaiku Oru Uyir'', was published in 1980. He subsequently told of how the editor of ''Kumudam'' had "seen a porter on a platform at Egmore Railway Station engrossed in one of umar'sstories. The porter had also forgone customers just to finish the story. It was then that

he editor He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

decided to make umarwrite a novel." In 1986, his publisher asked him if he could produce a novel a month; as a result, he became a full-time writer. As of 2019, Kumar has written over 1500 novels; his son, for whom digitizing the novels into e-books is a full-time profession, has been able to locate "around 1,000" of them.Guns & prose
by Akila Kannadasan, in ''

''; published 30 March 2019 He has also written over 2000 short stories, and scripts for over 250 television series, as well as the 2015 film '' Sandamarutham''.Guns, guts and glory
by Akila Kannadasan; in ''

''; published 10 June 2015 In 2019, he announced that he was negotiating with

Sathya Jyothi Films Sathya Jyothi Films is an Indian film production and distribution company in Tamil Nadu. It was established in 1977 by T. G. Thyagarajan. History Sathya Jyothi Films was founded by T. G. Thyagarajan in the 1970s. Thyagarajan, an MBA graduate ...

regarding adaptations of his work on

Amazon Prime Amazon Prime is a paid subscription service from Amazon which is available in various countries and gives users access to additional services otherwise unavailable or available at a premium to other Amazon customers. Services include same, one- ...

Early life

Prior to writing full-time, Kumar spent five years teaching, with a degree in education from Ramakrishna Vidyalaya; when he grew bored with this, he worked as a sales representative for an industrial rubber goods company.

Pseudonym

To avoid being confused with two pre-existing Tamil authors named "KR Rajagopal", he created a pseudonym based on the names of his sister and his sister-in-law: Rajeshwari and Ananthakumar.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kumar, Rajesh Living people People from Coimbatore Indian crime fiction writers Pseudonymous writers Tamil-language writers Year of birth missing (living people)