Sharmistha Mohanty is the author of two novels, Book One, and the recently published New Life. Her translation of Tagore's fiction is due out from India Ink/Roli in early 2007. Currently she is at work on a new novel, and a collection of prose texts. Mohanty studied fiction writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop in the United States. She has been the recipient of fellowships in Germany, New York, and France. She has also been awarded a Senior Fellowship from the Ministry of Culture. Her work has been published in various journals in the United States, U.K., and France.

"New Life is a tale of love, of a girl growing up to be a woman in Calcutta, and of her spiritual awakening across continents. It can be read as a story of complex human relationships, evocatively interspersed with metaphorical descriptions of landscapes. A passage in the novel aptly describes the author's intention behind her writing: 'she wrote from, not about. She attempted to create a space, a vast space where at the same time, and where each thing could become more than itself.'

This is not another Indian English novel written for export; a native sensibility works in English to rediscover our own ways of understanding the world.
New Life is not just a tale, it is a poem."