Shumona Sinha

 Shumona Sinha was born and grew up in Calcutta, West Bengal. In 1990 she won Bengal’s Best Young Poet award. She started learning French at the age of 22 and moved to Paris a few years later. She has since been naturalised French. She has translated and published several anthologies of contemporary French and Bengali poetry in collaboration with her then-husband, the poet Lionel Ray. Her first novel, Fenêtre sur l'abîme, was published in 2008. Her award-winning second novel, Down with the Poor! (Assommons les pauvres !) was translated into German, Arabic, Italian and Hungarian as well as into English, and was adapted for stage in Germany and Austria. Her third novel, Calcutta (2014), received the Prix du rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises and the Grand Prix du Roman of the Société des gens de lettres. Her most recent novel, Souvenirs de ces époques nues, was published in 2024 by Éditions Gallimard.