Sahitya Akademi award winner Tanuj Solanki on writing, and how Muzaffarnagar changed after 2013 riots | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Sahitya Akademi award winner Tanuj Solanki on writing, and how Muzaffarnagar changed after 2013 riots | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Surbhi Gupta |Updated: June 18, 2019 9:03:33 am

Sahitya Akademi award winner Tanuj Solanki on writing, and how Muzaffarnagar changed after 2013 riots

His short story collection Diwali in Muzaffarnagar that won the Sahitya Akedemi award explores what it means to leave a small town as a young adult, and to return home much later.

I started when I was 23. Reading was my first pull, and, of course, a bit of silly arrogance — the arrogance of the non-practitioner: ‘If you can write a story like that. I can write it better’.

After writing short stories for newspapers and magazines, Tanuj Solanki, whose day job involves working for an insurance company in Mumbai, wrote his first novel, Neon Noon, in 2016. Published by Harper Collins, it received critical acclaim and was shortlisted for Tata Lit Live First Book Award. But it was his second book, Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, in 2018, which established him as a writer. The short story collection explores what it means to leave a small town as a young adult, and to return home much later. It has just got him the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puruskar. Excerpts from an interview: