Vikram Sampath is the author of seven acclaimed books, including Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars; My Name Is Gauhar Jaan: The Life and Times of a Musician; Voice of the Veena: S Balachander: A Biography; Women of the Records and Indian Classical Music and the Gramophone: 1900-1930, and the two-volume biography Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past and Savarkar: A Contested Legacy, 1924-1966.
Vikram was elected as fellow to the prestigious Royal Historical Society of the United Kingdom (2021). He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s first Yuva Puraskar in English literature and the ARSC International Award for excellence in historical research in New York for his book on Gauhar Jaan. The book has also been adapted to theatre as a play Gauhar by Lillette Dubey. Vikram was among the four writers and artists to be selected as a writer-in-residence at the Rashtrapati Bhawan (2015). Vikram is an Aspen Global Leadership Fellow and an Eisenhower Global Fellow (2021). Vikram is also a trained Carnatic vocalist. He has established the Archive of Indian Music, India’s first digital sound archive for vintage recordings. He is the founder-director of the Bangalore Literature Festival and curates the ZEE Group’s ARTH-A Culture Fest.
His books:
Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars
My Name is Gauhar Jaan: The Life and Times of a Musician
Voice of the Veena: S Balachander, a Biography
Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past
Savarkar: A Contested Legacy
Women of the Records
Bravehearts of Bharat: Vignettes from Indian History
Indian Classical Music and The Gramophone: 1900-1930