Harcharan Chawla


Harcharan Dass Chawla was an Urdu writer.
Born in Mianwali, he moved to Delhi, India as a refugee as a result of the 1947 partition of India. The event served as the backdrop for his first novel Darinday, and would leave a lasting impression throughout his career, with migration and cultural identity dominant themes of his work.
After graduating from the Panjab University in Chandigarh in 1956 and working for Indian Railways, in 1971 Chawla moved to Frankfurt, Germany then Oslo, Norway in 1974 where he would eventually settle. His shift to Europe would bring new dimension to his writing, addressing issues of loss of culture and identity faced by South Asians migrating to different parts of the world.
In Oslo, Chawla helped creating a literary bridge between the Indian subcontinent and Norway by translating Norwegian stories into Urdu and Hindi and South Asian work into Norwegian. Completing the work of his wife Purnima Chawla who died in the midst of the process, he translated Knut Hamsun's novel Victoria. En kjærlighedshistorie into Hindi and Urdu and Indian Foreteller, a compilation of stories by Indian writers into Norwegian. He was also the Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi consultant for Deichmanske Bibliotek, Oslo.

Works