Tabish Khair is a poet, novelist, journalist and scholar who was born in Ranchi, and educated in Gaya, Bihar, India.
He published his first poems more than 40 years ago and his first book, via a national competition, with Rupa & Co. (Delhi) about 30 years ago when he was still living in Gaya. He is Assoc. Prof. in the Department of English at the Aarhus University. With a MA from Magadh University (Gaya), he worked for the Times of India (Patna, and then the Delhi office) and later completed a PhD from Copenhagen University and a DPhil from Aarhus University, Denmark.
Khair’s novels include How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, Just Another Jihadi Jane which was published as Jihadi Jane in India, and The Body by the Shore. His other novels are The Bus Stopped, Filming: A Love Story and The Thing About Thugs. He is also the author of the poetry collections, Where Parallel Lines Meet and Man of Glass. In 2023, he published his first collection of short stories, Namaste Trump and Other Stories and, in 2024, Oxford University Press brought out his study, Literature Against Fundamentalism.
Khair has also authored various scholarly studies, including Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels, The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness, The New Xenophobia, which was short-listed for the Sahitya Akademi Prize, and co-edited scholarly works, as well as Other Routes, an anthology of pre-modern travel texts by Africans and Asians. His articles, poetry and fiction has been included in various prominent anthologies and magazines including New Left Review, Harvard Review, Wasafiri, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Times Literary Supplement, American Book Review, Massachusetts Review, London Magazine, P.N. Review, New England Review, and Journal of Postcolonial Writing and has appeared in Indian, British, Danish, American, German, Italian, South African as well as Chinese publications.
While Khair writes creatively and academically only in English, he has also occasionally translated texts from Urdu, Hindi and Danish. Khair has reviewed and written for various news publication, including the Guardian in UK, Politiken and Information in Denmark, Times of India, the Hindu and Frontline in India.
Khair’s honours and prizes include the All India Poetry Prize, awarded by the Poetry Society and the British Council), as well as prestigious awards by the Leverhulme Foundation (UK), the Carlsberg Foundation (Denmark), etc. His novels have been shortlisted for about 20 prizes in six countries, including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the DSC Prize for South Asia, the Sahitya Akademi award, and the Encore Award, and translated into eight languages.
He has been writer in residence and visiting professor at various universities (U Leeds, U York, U Cambridge, U Hongkong, Jawaharlal Nehru U, Delhi U, and at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Bhubaneshwar). In 2024, he was a fellow at the International Writer’s Programme of Iowa University, USA. Khair continues to travel on an Indian passport as a personal reminder of the uneven channels of movement and reception in the First World.
Drown all the Refugees is Khair’s ninth novel and 23rd book.
His books:
How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position
Jihadi Jane
Night of Happiness
The Thing About Thugs
Reading Literature Today
Man of Glass
Drown all the Refugees (forthcoming)