Quick Facts
Biography
Gita Mehta (born in 1943) is an Indian writer and was born in Delhi in a well-known Odia family. She is the daughter of Biju Patnaik, an Indian independence activist and a Chief Minister in post-independence Odisha, then known as Orissa. Her younger brother Naveen Patnaik has been the Chief Minister of Odisha since 2000. She completed her education in India and at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
She has produced and/or directed 14 television documentaries for UK, European and US networks. During the years 1970-1971 she was a television war correspondent for the US television network NBC. Her film compilation of the Bangladesh revolution, Dateline Bangladesh, was shown in cinema theatres both in India and abroad.
Although being the wife of Sonny Mehta, head of the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house, keeps her in the publishing limelight, she has emerged a writer in her own right. Her books have been translated into 21 languages and been on the bestseller lists in Europe, the US and India. The subject of both her fiction and non-fiction is exclusively focused on India: its culture and history, and the Western perception of it. Her works reflect the insight gained through her journalistic and political background.
Gita Mehta divides her time between New York City, London and New Delhi.
Book Works
- Karma Cola. Simon and Schuster. 1979.
- Raj (1989)
- A River Sutra (1993)
- Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of Modern India, London, Secker and Warburg, 1997. ISBN 0-436-20417-7
- Eternal Ganesha
- Mehta, Gita (1979). Karma Kola, Marketing the Mystic East. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 201. ISBN 0-671-25083-3.
- Smith, Wendy, 'Gita Mehta: Making India Accessible'