Anand Neelakantan | |
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Born | Thrippunithura, Kerala, India |
Occupation |
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Alma mater | Government Engineering College, Thrissur |
Genre | Mythological fiction |
Years active | 2012 – present |
Notable works | Asura: Tale of the Vanquished Ajaya: Roll of the Dice Ajaya: Rise of Kali The Rise of Sivagami |
Spouse | Aparna Anand |
Children | 2- Abhinav Anand , Ananya Anand |
Website | |
anandneelakantan |
Anand Neelakantan an Indian novelist, columnist, screenwriter, and public speaker. One of India's best selling authors , He is known for writing mythological fiction and has authored 15 books in English and one in Malayalam. He has been writing a column in The New Indian Express since 2017.[1]
He follows the style of telling stories based on the perspective of the antagonists or supporting characters. His debut work Asura: Tale of the Vanquished (2012) was based on the Indian epic Ramayana, told from the perspective of Ravana—the first book in his Ramayana series. It was followed by series of books based on characters from Mahabharata and Baahubali. His books have been translated to different languages such as Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, English, Sinhalese, Burmese, Japense and Indonesian. Anand has written screenplays for Hindi television serials, such as Siya Ke Ram on Star TV, Mahabali Hanuman on Sony TV, Chakravarthy Ashoka on Colors TV, Sarfarosh on Netflix, Swaraj on DD National, Srimad Ramayan on Sony TV, among others. He has written the story for the OTT series TAJ on Zee5. Anand has acted in two advertisement films and has also played the role of Ettappa Naicker in the TV show Swaraj on Doordarshan.[2]
His Asura was featured in the list of "100 books by Indian authors to read in a lifetime" by Amazon Books editors.[3] The book has sold more than a million copies over the years. Three of his books have been shortlisted for Crossword Book Award. He was listed as one among the "100 top celebrities in India" in 2015 and in 2017 by Forbes India. Anand also writes a column for The New Indian Express on current affairs and his fortnightly column is called Acute Angle.[4]