Invitation
About the Book
Salman Rushdie
Shashi Tharoor
Suphala
Press Release
Photos
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| Salman Rushdie’s Enchantress of Florence: Book launch - June 3, 2008 |
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Shashi Tharoor
Indian Diplomat and Writer, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Chairman of Afras Ventures
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Chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures and former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Shashi Tharoor was the official candidate of India for the succession to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, and came a close second out of seven contenders in the race. His UN career began in 1978, when he joined the staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva, and included key responsibilities in peace-keeping after the Cold War and as a senior adviser to the Secretary-General, as well as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. Dr Tharoor left the UN on 31 March 2007.
Dr Tharoor is also the award-winning author of ten books, as well as hundreds of articles, op-eds and book reviews in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek and The Times of India. He has served for two years as a Contributing Editor and occasional columnist for Newsweek International. Since April 2001 he has authored a fortnightly column in The Hindu and since January 2007 in The Times of India.
His six non-fiction books are: Reasons of State (1981), a study of Indian foreign-policy making; India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), which was cited by President Clinton in his address to the Indian Parliament; Kerala: God's Own Country (2002), with text by Shashi Tharoor and paintings by the renowned M.F. Husain; Nehru: The Invention of India (2003), a biography of India's first Prime Minister; a collection of literary essays, Bookless in Baghdad (2005) and another essay collection, The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century (2007). His three novels are the classic The Great Indian Novel (1989) which is required reading in several courses on post-colonial literature; Riot (2001), a searing examination of Hindu-Muslim violence in contemporary India, and Show Business (1992) which received a front-page accolade in the New York Times Book Review and has since been made into a motion picture, "Bollywood". He has also authored a collection of short stories, The Five-Dollar Smile (1990). Shashi Tharoor's books have been translated into French, German, Italian, Malayalam, Marathi, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Spanish
Born in London in 1956, Dr Tharoor was educated in India and the United States, completing a PhD in 1978 at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he received the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student. At Fletcher, Shashi Tharoor helped found and was the first Editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs, a journal now in its 31st year. Dr Tharoor was also awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Puget Sound. A compelling and effective speaker, he is fluent in English and French.
In January 1998, Dr. Tharoor was named a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He is the recipient of several awards, including a Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and was named to India's highest honour for Overseas Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, in 2004.
Shashi Tharoor serves on the Board of Overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute, and the Advisory Boards of the Indo-American Arts Council, the American India Foundation, the World Policy Journal, the Virtue Foundation and the human rights organization Breakthrough. Dr Tharoor has been appointed an International Adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva for the period 2008-2011. He is also a Fellow of the New York Institute of the Humanities and the Patron of the Modern School, Dubai. |
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