'Lahore: The Physical and Spiritual Landscape of My Writing' Event

Bapsi Sidhwa is an internationally acknowledged Pakistani/American novelist. Her best known work, 'Ice Candy Man' was published in 1988 in England and three years later in the US under the title 'Cracking India'. It draws on her childhood experiences in Lahore at the time of the 1947 Partition of India. The novel was made into the film 'Earth' by the Indo-Canadian film maker Deepa Mehta which won a number of awards including the Grand Prize at the Deauville Panasian Film Festival.

Bapsi Sidhwa has written four other novels which have been translated and published in several languages.  'The Bride' and 'The Crow Eaters' have been especially acclaimed with latter novel receiving  the David Higham award. In 2006 she wrote the novel 'Water' which is based on Deepa Mehta's 2005 film of that title. The novel received the 2007 Premio Mondallo prize for foreign authors. Earlier in 1991, Bapsi Sidhwa had received Pakistan's highest prize for the arts, the Sitar-i-Imtiaz.  She has held a number of visiting fellowships and scholarships in such Universities as Harvard and was a visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Southampton.

Her most recent publication, 'City of Sin and Splendour' is an edited anthology of writings on Lahore; the city of her birth and the inspiration for her creative works. This topic forms the focus of her public lecture.