Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Books In Order

Publication Order of Brotherhood of the Conch Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Picture Books

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born in Kolkata, India in the year 1956, and lives close to San Francisco with her two kids (named Abhay and Anand, whose names she once used in her kid’s books) and a husband. She teaches creative writing courses at a local college, and coordinates a helpline for South Asian women.

Chitra came to the United States for her graduate studies, getting her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and wrote her doctoral dissertation on Christopher Marlowe. She also got a Master’s degree in English from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

To earn money during her education, she had many odd jobs, including selling merchandise in an Indian boutique, washing instruments in a science lab, babysitting, and slicing bread in a bakery. While she was Berkeley, she worked in the dining hall and she lived in the International House. She lived for a short time in Ohio and Illinois, but has spent a lot of her life in Northern California, which she writes about often.

Chitra is the former president and co-founder of Maitri, which is a helpline for South Asian women that are dealing with domestic abuse and was founded in the year 1991. She has also served on Pratham Houston’s board, which is a non-profit organization that works on bringing literacy to disadvantaged Indian kids.

Chitra’s work has been published in more than fifty magazines, including The New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly. It has also been published in more than fifty anthologies, which includes the O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Chitra’s work has been translated in over twenty languages, including: Japanese, Dutch, Bengali, Hebrew, and Russian. Many have been used for city-wide and campus-wide reads.

Her collection of short stories, called “Arranged Marriage” won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction, and an American Book Award. “The Conch Bearer” was nominated for a Bluebonnet Award in the year 2003.

Her books “The Mistress of Spices” and “Sister of My Heart” have both been made into movies by Gurinder Chadha and Paul Berges (an English language film) and Suhasini Mani Ratnam (a Tamil TV serial) respectively. “The Word Love” was adapted into a bilingual short film in English and Bengali, that was called “Ammar Ma”.

Chitra’s debut novel, called “The Mistress of Spices”, was released in the year 1997. She writes the “Brotherhood of the Conch” series and some stand alone books. Her work is from the genre of children’s fiction and literary fiction.

The “Brotherhood of the Conch” series takes place entirely in India and draws upon both the folklore and the culture of the region.

“The Mistress of Spices” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 1997. Sensual, magical, and tantalizing, this is the story of Tilo, a young woman that was born in a faraway place in another time. She is trained in the ancient art of spices and got ordained as a mistress charged with some unique powers.

Once she is fully initiated in a rite of fire, this newly immortal Tilo, who inhabits the arthritic and gnarled body of an old lady, travels through time to Oakland. Here she opens up a shop where she administers spices as cures to all her customers.

An unexpected romance with a good looking stranger makes her have to pick between the vicissitudes of modern life and the supernatural life of an immortal.

“The Conch Bearer” is the first novel in the “Brotherhood of the Conch” series and was released in the year 2003. In a dirty shack in the not-so-desirable Indian neighborhood he lives in, twelve-year-old Anand has been entrusted with a conch shell that has mystical powers. He is tasked with returning the shell to its rightful home hundreds of miles away.

Going with him on the journey are Nisha (who is a resourceful yet headstrong child of the streets) and Abhaydatta (a mysterious man of surprising resources and indeterminate age). This journey is going to take him a lot further from home than he has ever been and is going to teach him a lot more than he ever thought it would. It is also going to require him to make a poignant choice that is going to alter him forever.

“The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming” is the second novel in the “Brotherhood of the Conch” series and was released in the year 2005. Anand, who found his vocation as the Keeper of the Conch, is now living in the Himalayan Silver Valley. Here, he trains to become the Healer in the Brotherhood. While Anand practices the art of far-seeing, he has a vision of a horrified wise-woman that pleads for help.

He is devastated by Master Abhaydatta’s choice to leave him behind as he goes to help the woman out. Anand is able to convince the magic conch to make a magic portal that allows him and Nisha to suddenly appear by Abhaydatta’s side. However, during the metaphysical hurtle, Anand and Nisha get separated and he gets thrown back to an ancient Indian kingdom.

Here, there is an evil sorcerer that plans the royal family’s downfall. What hope could Anand have of beating this sorcerer, finding his friends, and getting back to his own time without his powerful conch? The answers could lie within the depths of the Mirror of Fire and Dreaming.

“Shadowland” is the third novel in the “Brotherhood of the Conch” series and was released in the year 2009. Anand’s beloved Conch goes missing, and he and Nisha have to travel into a dystopian future in order to get it back. It is a future where the water and the air have been severely corrupted that the upper classes live in luxury in their hermetically sealed domes, and the lower classes battle to survive.

Ecological and class issues wind up coming to a head in a world of customs, exotic lore, and the smells and sights of India.

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