January: The year began with grief and shock at the massacre of the editor Charb and nine employees of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, gunned down by the Kouachi brothers on the 7th.
India witnessed the first Internet death of an author, when the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan posted on his Facebook wall: "Author Perumal Murugan is dead." Murugan took this unusual step after facing harassment from the Gounder community and local Hindutva groups; he remains in retirement today.
February: Colleen McCullough once explained why she abandoned her first career, neurophysiology: "I didn't want to be a 70-year old spinster in a cold water, walk-up flat with one 60-watt light bulb." Instead, at the time of her death in 77, The Thorn Birds had made her one of the world's most bestselling novelists.
In Kolhapur, Communist leader and well-known rationalist Govind Pansare, author of 21 books including one on Shivaji, was fired at when he and his wife were out on their morning walk; he died of his injuries four days later. In Bangladesh, the blogger Avijit Roy was savagely hacked to death as he left a book fair with his wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed, who survived her multiple injuries. Roy was the founder-editor of Mukto-Mona, a prominent atheist and rationalist forum.
March: Terry Pratchett, creator of the Discworld, and one of the world's best-loved bestselling authors, died in his home; he had been suffering from Alzheimers'.
In Dhaka, the outspoken rationalist blogger Washiqur Rahman Babu, was knifed to death by three Islamic fundamentalists.
The essayist and surgeon Paul Kalanithi died of lung cancer. He was only 37; one of his last blogposts was written to his child, still an infant. "You filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied."
April: In Karachi, Sabeen Mahmud wound up a discussion on Balochistan at her cafe and community space, The Second Floor. She was driving her mother back home when gunmen shot her, fatally, as she was waiting at an intersection.
Tamil writer Jayakanthan died at 81; he had won both the Jnanpith and the Sahitya Akademi awards, and written 35 novels and novellas, innumerable short stories and two autobiographies.
Gunter Grass died at 87 in Lübeck, Germany. In his Nobel speech, years ago, he had said that writers were a threat: they saw truth in the plural, they were unable to leave the past in peace and they cast doubt on the victors of history by giving the losers a voice.
May: Henning Mankell died at 67 in Sweden. His hugely popular Kurt Wallander novels were driven by his passionate interest in the workings of the justice system and his need "to create a change in the world we live in".
In Sylhet in Bangladesh, Mukto-Mona writer Ananta Bijoy Das was hacked to death outside his home by four armed men.
Bengali writer Suchitra Bhattacharya died of a heart attack in Dhakuria, Kolkata. She wrote critically praised novels, but was most loved for her aunt-and-niece detective pair, Mitin Mashi and Tutun.
June: Dasaradhi Rangacharya died at 86, famous for his history of Telengana, his translation of the four Vedas into Telugu and the active part he took in the Telangana movement, fighting against the Nizam.
July: President Obama, avid reader and fan, was one of the first to tweet in tribute to E L Doctorow: "[He] was one of America's greatest novelists. His books taught me much, and he will be missed."
August: The atheist blogger Niloy Neel was brutally murdered at his home in Bangladesh.
In Dharwad, the murder of the scholar and rationalist MM Kalburgi, shot by two gunmen at his home one morning, would have major repercussions, sparking a writers' revolt later in the year.
At the age of 82, Oliver Sacks died.
Robert Conquest, historian whom Christopher Hitchens called "the dragon slayer of the Stalinoid apologists" died at 98. He was also a highly respected SF editor and writer.
September: Bestselling novelist Jackie Collins died at the age of 77; she only told her sister, Joan, that she had breast cancer two weeks before her death.
October: The attacks by Islamists in Bangladesh continued unchecked as publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan was brutally murdered, and three others injured.
November: Dr Mahip Singh, writer, teacher, editor, died at 85; his short stories - "Kala Baap Gora Baap", "Pani Aur Pul" - were widely read. As part of the Punjab Group, he had worked along with Kuldip Nayar, I K Gujral and Lt General J S Arora, to report atrocities in Punjab during the 1980s and 1990s.
December: Moroccan writer Fatema Mernissi died at 74. Her most popular works included Beyond the Veil, The Veil and the Male Elite, and Islam and Democracy; her books were widely read, though they had to be sold under the counter in Hassan II's police state.
Mernissi, by her own standards, qualified as a happy woman: "…One who could exercise all kinds of rights, from the right to move to the right to create, compete, and challenge, and at the same time could be loved for doing so."
Email: nilanjanasroy@gmail
A longer version of this appears on the website
A longer version of this appears on the website
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
