If You Sing like That for Me (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Akhil Sharma was born in 1972 in New Delhi, India. Subsequently, he moved with his family to Edison, New Jersey, where he grew up. His parents spoke Hindi exclusively while at home, and Sharma visited India every other summer during his childhood and adolescence. His strong ties to India and familiarity with the common culture provides the basis for his authentic portrayals of the details of everyday life in India that characterize his works.

As a child, Sharma enjoyed writing and attempted to emulate the style of the science fiction writers he admired. He attended Princeton University where he received a bachelor of arts degree in public policy, but he did not abandon his love of writing and went on to study creative writing under such luminaries as Toni Morrison, Tony Kushner, Russell Banks, and John McPhee. He spent one year as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in creative writing at Stanford, and worked briefly in Hollywood as a screenplay writer. He went on to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Sharma has developed a reputation as one of the most promising up-and-coming writers in the United States. His first published story, "If You Sing like That for Me," appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in May 1995, just as he was entering Harvard Law School. It was subsequently published in The Best American Short Stories 1996, and received the prestigious Second Place O. Henry Award in 1996. Since then, he has had several stories published in both The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker.

After law school, Sharma went on to work as an investment banker. In 2000, at the age of 29, Sharma debuted his first novel, An Obedient Father, which he wrote between his long work hours. An excerpt of the novel was published in the June, 2000 issue of The New Yorker; it generated a fair amount of outcry and controversy for its frank depiction of incest between the main character and his young daughter. Nevertheless, the novel was released to widespread critical acclaim. It was named a New York Times Notable Book for 2000. Sharma himself won The Voice Literary Supplement's Year 2000 "Writers on the Verge" prize. He also received the Hemingway/PEN New England Award in 2001 for his novel.

In January 2004, W.W. Norton announced that they would publish Sharma's next novel, tentatively titled Mother and Son. This novel is based on his previous New Yorker short story, "Surrounded by Sleep."