Renowned author Amitabh Ghosh was conferred with the 54th Jnanpith Award for 2018 by former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi in Delhi on Wednesday.
Ghosh has been conferred the award for his outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Indian Literature in English. He is the youngest awardee to receive the prestigious award.
Receiving the award, Ghosh, who is the first English writer to be honoured with the prestigious award said, "When I started writing many years ago, I could not imagine that the Jnanpith Award would ever come my way. In those days, Indians who wrote in English would think of themselves as marginal, both to Indian and to English literature."
Being a social anthropologist by academic training, hehas written extensively in both fiction and non-fiction sphere of literature.He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1990 for his book The Shadow Lines .
The government of India awarded him the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2007. He also holds four honorary doctorates.
The Jnanpith Award is an Indian literary award presented annually to an author for the outstanding contribution towards literature.