Odia Authors Info

 Dinakrishna Das was born in 1650, he stands out among the great poets and devotees of Krishna and Radha cult in the medieval odia literature and flourished during the rule of king Divya Singh Dev of Khurda Royal Families. He was of the age of ornate poetry in odia. The metaphors and similies were modelled on the pattern and style of Sanskrit Kavya and the hall mark of ornate style was verbal artificialities, pedantries, subtle rhymes, etc. Further, the literary compositions during his period were marked by adherence to the depiction of the theme of Vaishnavite devotion enshrined in the eternal love of Radha and Krishna. Medieval odia poetry was overwhelmingly packed with the essence and import of Vaishnavite movement. Besides, the pervading cult of Jagannath had exerted its indelible impact on odia literature and it was a force to reckon with. The then odia literature and the writings of the medieval poets like Dinakrishna Das emphasised the importance of lord Jagannath or Purusho...

 Gopabandhu Das was born in 1877, He was a well known poet. Born in a middle-class Brahmin family, he received his B.A. degree from Ravenshaw College, Cuttack, and a law degree from Calcutta University. He practised law before he joined the Gandhian movement and worked for the poor in rural odisha. He has been described as the founder of the Satyabadi Age in odia literature, so called after the Vana Vidyalaya he had set up at Satyabadi, near Puri in 1915. He and his compatriots, Godavarisa Misra and Nilakantha Das wrote a kind of poetry that was simple and lyrical and dealt mostly with the history, legends and folklore of odisha. Their immediate aim was to create a literature that would arouse the people’s nationalist sentiment. Gopabandhu’s poetic career began with Abakasa Chinta (Thoughts of leisure-hours, 1899). It is a collection of lyrics he wrote during his school and college days. A second edition was published probably around 1912. The 1912 edition contains thirtynine poems...

 Jagannathprasad Das was born in 1936 is a noted poet and playwright. An M.A in Political Science from the University of Allahabad, he is a senior officer of the Indian Administrative Service. His first collection of poems Prathama Purusha (First Person, 1971) is quite popular and has been translated into Hindi and English. The poems are spoken by an ‘I’ who could be both the poet himself, a modern man, or the primal man. This ambiguity in the title gives a special significance to the book. For, the sense of loneliness and fear which the poems convey belongs, to both the poet and his primal ancestor. The book depicts a world in which strains, crossroads, labyrinths, circles, and mirrors are the staple images. It is ‘a strange land’, an‘enormous void’. And the people who inhabit it – emperor, soldier, magician, harlot – act out their roles in a,spiritless, mechanical manner. Life is but a mask play. But the ‘I’ is no passive onlooker, nor is he indifferent to the meaningless goings...

 Kamalakanta Das was born in 1906, he passed the Matriculation Examination from the Pyarimohan Academy, Cuttack in 1927. After seeking employment at many places he at last got a job in the Co-operative Department. In 1962 he retired from Government service and spent his life of retirement at Cuttack till death.Kamalakanta was a prolific writer. He tried his hand in writing novels, short stories, poems and essays.But he won popularity and appreciation chiefly as a novelist. His first novel Bou (Mother), which he wrote at the age of eighteen, is considered to be his best. Soon after its publication in 1930, he was known as a novelist of high order. His life was a life of dedication to literature. He continued his creative activity till rendered invalid and speechless by disease. His works comprise twenty-four novels, six collections of short stories, one collection of poems and a few prose essays. He was a painter and artist too. For his life long contribution to Oriya literature, h...

 Kartika Das was born in 1600,No information is available as to his family or residence. Rukmini Bibaha (literally, Rukmini’s marriage, published by Prachi, 1930), a kavya in ten cantos and Nabanuraga(literally, the advent of love, yet unpublished) are the two works ascribed to his authorship. The theme of the former is the marriage of Srikrishna with Princess Rukmini. The story occurs in the Bhagavata, the Harivamsa and other Vaisnavite works. The style is mostly Puranic but in some passages, human form and beautiful nature are decribed in a simple and lucid diction. The salient point about this work is the poet’s choice of a theme of Krishna’s love with Svakiya Nayika (married wife) while the general trend,

 Kisoricharana Das was born in 1924,he is an outstanding representative of the generation of short story writers who came to dominate the Oriya literary scene after the sixties. He has distinguished himself by concentrating on a particular area of experience, the middle and the upper middle classes and also by bringing an introspective reflective element into the Oriya short story form. The predominant theme of his stories is a search for meaning in life by the members of a comfortable middle class. His characters seek to go beyond the commonplaceness of everyday life based on habit, compromise and trivialities. This search often involves a rejection of the secure and familiar world of middle class living and its values. Most of the characters withdraw into their familiar worlds after a brief contact with other worlds of ecstasy or intensity or of any significant experience. The stories of Das are structured as a series of situations which give rise to reflections on the part of th...