Rohinton Mistry biography

Rohinton Mistry Biography

Rohinton Mistry was born in Bombay, India in 1952, of Parsi descent. He earned a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics at the University of Bombay. In 1975, at the age of 23, he immigrated to Canada where he studied at the University of Toronto and received a B.A. in English and Philosophy.

After a few years in Canada, he began to write stories for which he received immediate attention; he won two Hart House literary prizes and Canadian Fiction Magazine's annual Contributor's Prize in 1985. In 1987, he published a collection of short stories entitled Tales From Firozsha Baag.

He published his first novel, Such a Long Journey, in 1991, for which he received Canada's Governor General's Award, the W. H. Smith/ Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book and short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize. The book was the basis for the 1998 acclaimed feature film of the same title.

A Fine Balance was published in 1995. It won the Giller Prize, the Royal Society of Literature's Winfried Holtby Prize, and the 1996 Los Angeles Times Award for fiction. It was also short-listed for the Booker Prize and was a selection of the Oprah book club.

Family Matters was published in 2002 and was also short-listed for the Booker Prize.

In 2008 he published The Scream, illustrated by Tony Urquhart. This 48 page volume was originally printed in a limited edition of 150 copies that was sold exclusively by World Literacy of Canada as a fundraiser for their organization.

He won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2012.

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