Richard Crasta

Richard Crasta, a descendant of Hindu ancestors who were converted by Portuguese colonists, was born in Bangalore and grew up in Mangalore on the coast of Southwestern India, often under the care of Catholic nuns and Jesuits.

Stumbling upon a book by Bertrand Russell and a novel by Saul Bellow, he decided to lose his Catholic religion and move to America and become a writer.

After a few years in the Indian Administrative Service, he moved to the United States, studying at Columbia University and living in the New York area.

“The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel (of Colonialism and Desire),” his first novel, an ironic, satirical and comic novel of post-Independence India, was a sensational bestseller in India and was published in ten countries to considerable acclaim. Among other things, it broke many taboos on the use of sexual language and the frank expression of opinions on religion and other sacred cow subjects in India. His most amusing experience following the publication of that book was his first meeting with the revered journalist-author Khushwant Singh, who asked him point blank, "Do you really have these permanent erections?" He was also on a national television show with Sushmita Sen, Miss India and future movie star, and Shatrughan Sinha, a Bollywood star.

There followed “Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex,” and “Impressing the Whites: The New International Slavery”, a hotly controversial book.

Crasta has continued to publish controversial, nonconformist books, all of which are laced with variable quantities of humor. The themes that interest him include freedom of expression, individuality, authenticity, intercultural politics, and sexual liberation. His three most recent books are “The Hunger for Touch and Love,” “What We All Need,” and “The Killing of an Author,” a literary biography.

Among the writers who have influenced or inspired him he includes James Joyce, Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Michel Houllebecq, and Kurt Vonnegut, who described “The Revised Kama Sutra” as “very funny.”