Sumana Sinha

Sumana Sinha alias Shumona SINHA (Bengali: সুমনা সিনহা '; is a French writer from India.

Shumona Sinha was born in 1973 in Calcutta, India. In 1990, she received Bengali’s Best Young Poet Award, and moved to Paris in 2001. She then got a M.Phil degree in French language and literature from the Sorbonne University. In 2008, she published her first novel Fenêtre sur l'abîme at Éditions de la Différence. In 2011, her second novel, Assommons les pauvres !, was published at Éditions de l'Olivier and was acclaimed by the critics, got the Prix Valery-Larbaud 2012, le Prix Populiste 2011, was in the short list of the Renaudot Award, had its title inspired by the eponymous poem in prose of Charles Baudelaire : Assommons les Pauvres ! The central character/narrator of this novel, with a strong resemblance to Sinha herself, was brutally confronted by the misery, both material and intellectual, of her fellow people, migrating in Europe for a better life. Assommons les Pauvres ! has become a part of scolarly programs to discuss the questions on identity, exile, writing as a woman, writing in a foreign language, the relationship between the literature and the politics... at the Notre Dame University at Chicago course conducted by Prof. Alison Rice, at the American University in Paris by Prof. Anne-Marie Picard, at l'INALCO (Langues'O) by Tirthankar Chanda.

In her latest novel Calcutta, published in January 2014, Shumona Sinha goes down the memory lane of a Bengali family to describe the violent political history of West Bengal and is rewarded by the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres et le Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises de L'Académie française (A French Academy Award for her brilliant contribution to the French language and literature). In her interviews for the French media, Shumona SINHA claims that her homeland is no longer India, nor even France, but the French language.

Works

• Fenêtre sur l'abîme, 2008
• Assommons les pauvres !, 2011, édition de l'Olivier/collection poche : POINT/SEUIL: Prix Valéry Larbaud, Prix Populiste
• CALCUTTA, 2014, édition de l'Olivier/ Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres, le Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises de L'Académie française