Shumona Sinha, also spelled ''Sumana Sinha''; (

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

: সুমনা সিনহা,

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, 27 June 1973), is a naturalised French writer born in

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, who lives in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. In her interviews for the French media, Shumona Sinha claims that her homeland is no longer India, nor even France, but the French language.

Early life

Shumona

Sinha Sinha is a Sanskrit term which originates in the Indian subcontinent and is common in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan, covering South Asia. It comes from a Sanskrit word meaning " lion" or "brave person". Usage subcontinent In Indi ...

was born in a Hindu middle-class family in Calcutta : her father was a professor of economics and her mother was a high school mathematics teacher. Her parents belonged to the

scribal A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promin ...

and landholding caste of Bengali Kayasthas with ancestors who were

Zamindar A zamindar ( Hindustani: Devanagari: , ; Persian: , ) in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semiautonomous ruler of a province. The term itself came into use during the reign of Mughals and later the British had begun using it as a ...

s.Jean-Claude Perrier
Une Indienne à Paris
''livreshebdo.fr'', 22 november 22. As an adolescent, Shumona was an avid reader, surrounded by books bought by her parents or offered by her maternal aunt, Ratna Basu, a scholar and translator of German into sanscrit. In 1990, she received Bengali's ''Best Young Poet Award''.

Studies

In 1995, at the age of 22, Shumona Sinha started learning French at Ramkrishna Mission School of Foreign Languages at Calcutta. She views her decision to study French as her personal post-colonial revolt against English, language of the former colonizers and the second official language of India. In 1998, she studied political science and economy at the university of Calcutta. In 2001, she got a master's degree in French literature and linguistics from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages at

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

Career

In 2001, she was recruited by the French embassy in India to become an English-language assistant teacher in a junior high school in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

There, she gained an M-Phil in

French language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...

and literature from the Sorbonne University. In 2008, she published her first novel ''Fenêtre sur l'abîme''. In the 2000s, she also translated and published several anthologies of Bengali and French poetry, together with her ex-husband, the writer

Lionel Ray Lionel Ray (born Robert Lorho; 19 January 1935, in Mantes-la-Ville) is a French poet and essayist. Biography Born of a Breton father and a Walloon mother, he spent his childhood in the town of Mantes-la-Jolie. He published several collections u ...

. In 2011, her second novel, ''Assommons les pauvres !'', was published at

Éditions de l'Olivier The Éditions de l'Olivier are a French publishing house created by Olivier Cohen and located 96 Boulevard du Montparnasse, in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Established in 1991, this company specializes in French and foreign literature. Ext ...

, which won her the Prix Valery-Larbaud 2012 and the Prix Populiste in 2011; it was shortlisted for the Prix Renaudot. ''Assommons les pauvres!'' is characterized by a harsh, but multilayered poetical literary reckoning with France's asylum system. The novel has become a part of scholarly programs to discuss the questions of identity, exile, writing as a woman, writing in a foreign language, the relationship between literature and politics, at the

Notre Dame University The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campus ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, a course conducted by Alison Rice, at the

American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was charte ...

in Paris by Anne-Marie Picard and at Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales by Tirthankar Chanda. ''Assommons les pauvres'' was adapted by several theaters in Germany and in Austria, especially by Thalia Theater in Hambourg and the Freies Werkstatt theater in Cologne. In her third novel ''Calcutta'', published in January 2014, Shumona Sinha goes down the memory lane of a

family to describe the violent political history of West Bengal. The book was rewarded by the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des gens de lettres and ''Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises'' of the

Académie française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

. The English translation of ''Calcutta'' was published by SSP, Delhi, in November 2019. Her fourth novel ''Apatride'', published in January 2017, is a parallel portrait of two Bengali women, one living in a village near Calcutta, caught up in a peasant insurrection and a romantic misadventure with her cousin, causing her to perish; the other one living in Paris, in a fragmented post-CharlieHebdo society, where racism of all the colors prevails. In ''Le testament russe'', her fifth novel, published in March 2020 by Gallimard (Blanche), she describes the fascination of a young Bengali girl, Tania, for a Russian Jewish editor in 1920 who was the founder editor of Raduga Publishers.
''La Grande Librairie'', 2020. Shumona Sinha' books have been translated into German, Italian, Hungarian and Arabic.

Works

*''Fenêtre sur l'abîme''; 2008, Éditions de La Différence *''Assommons les pauvres !''; 2011, Éditions de l'Olivier *''Calcutta'', 2014; Éditions de l'Olivier *''Apatride'', 2017; Éditions de l'Olivier *''Le Testament russe'', 2020; Gallimard (Blanche)

Award and distinctions

* 2012 en littérature, 2012 :

Prix Valery-Larbaud The Prix Valery Larbaud is a French literary prize created in 1967, ten years after writer Valery Larbaud's death, by ''L'Association Internationale des Amis de Valery Larbaud'', an organization dedicated to the promotion of his works. The prize is ...

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

: Prix Eugène Dabit du roman populiste *

2014 File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...

: Grand prix du roman de la

Société des gens de lettres Lactalis is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier SA. Lactalis is the largest dairy products group in the world, and is the sec ...

: Prix du rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises de l'

* 2016 : Internationaler Literaturpreis

References

External links

''Shumona Sinha: "J'écris comme je crache"''
(French)
''Shumona Sinha und die Migration in Frankreich: Zornige Zeugenschaft''
(German)
''Tales from France's immigration office win German International Literature Award''

''Lit prize winner Shumona Sinha: 'As a writer, I search for the truth
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sinha, Shumona Writers from Kolkata 1973 births Living people Women writers from West Bengal Prix Valery Larbaud winners Poets from West Bengal 20th-century Indian poets 20th-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian writers 21st-century Indian poets Bengali writers French people of Indian descent 20th-century French women writers 20th-century French non-fiction writers 21st-century French women writers 21st-century French non-fiction writers 21st-century Indian novelists Indian women poets Indian women novelists Novelists from West Bengal Naturalized citizens of France