Jerry Pinto

Born in 1966 in Goa, India, Jerry Pinto is an editor, journalist, novelist, poet, and translator whose work explores the pains of familial and political life. He has written six books, including the poetry collection Asylum and Other Poems and Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, an award-winning biography of Bollywood actress Helen Richardson Khan. In 2012 he published his first work of fiction, Em and the Big Hoom. This semi-autobiographical novel, which Salman Rushdie called “one of the very best books to come out of India in a long, long time,” tells the story of an unnamed narrator’s slow, painful attempt to come to terms with his mother’s bipolar disorder and suicidal tendencies. In addition to telling a persuasive coming-of-age story, Em and the Big Hoom offers an acute exploration of the impact of mental illness on intimate relationships, as well as a window into the fraught lives of the Goan Christians of Mumbai. “Love is never enough,” Pinto’s narrator says, “Madness is enough.” Pinto’s own work, however, suggests that art might offer some consolation for the insufficiencies of love.