Rohinton Mistry was born in 1952 in Bombay, India, to a Parsi family. His brother is the playwright and author Cyrus Mistry. He earned a BA in Mathematics and Economics from St. Xavier's College, Bombay. He emigrated to Canada with his wife-to-be Freny Elavia in 1975 and they married shortly afterwards. Mistry studied at the University of Toronto and received a BA in English and Philosophy. He worked in a bank for a while, before returning to studies, leading up to a degree in English and philosophy.
Career
While attending the University of Toronto he won two Hart House literary prizes, for stories which were published in the Hart House Review, and CanadianFiction Magazines annual Contributor's Prize for 1985. Three years later, Penguin Books Canada published his collection of 11 short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag. It was later published in the United States as Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag. The book consists of 11 short stories, all set within one apartment complex in modern-day Bombay. This volume contains the oft-anthologized story, "Swimming Lessons." His second book, the novel Such a Long Journey, was published in 1991. It won the Governor General's Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and for the Trillium Award. It has been translated into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese. It was adapted for the 1998 film Such a Long Journey. The content of the book caused a controversy at Mumbai University in 2010 due to the abusive and crass language against Bal Thackeray, leader of Shiv Sena, a political party from Maharashtra, as well as discriminatory and derogatory remarks about Maharashtrians. The book was prescribed for the second year Bachelor of Arts in 2007–08 as an optional text, according to University sources. Later, Dr. Rajan Welukar, University of Mumbai's Vice-Chancellor used the emergency powers in the Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994, to withdraw the book from the syllabus. His third book, and second novel, A Fine Balance, won the second annual Giller Prize in 1995, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 1996. It was selected for Oprah's Book Club in November 2001 and sold hundreds of thousands of additional copies throughout North America as a result. It won the 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize. Family Matters is a consideration of the difficulties that come with ageing, to which topic Mistry returned in 2008 with the short fiction The Scream. Mistry's books portray diverse facets of Indian socioeconomic life, as well as Parsi Zoroastrian life, customs, and religion. Many of his writings are markedly "Indo-nostalgic". His literary papers are housed at the Clara Thomas Archives at York University. In 2002, Mistry cancelled his United States book tour for his novel Family Matters after he and his wife were targeted by security agents at every airport he visited.
