Lakshmi Holmström

Lakshmi Holmström MBE (1 June 1935 – 6 May 2016 ) was an Indian-British writer, literary critic, and translator of Tamil fiction into English. Her most prominent works were her translations of short stories and novels by contemporary writers in Tamil, such as Mauni, Pudhumaipithan, Ashoka Mitran, Sundara Ramasami, C. S. Lakshmi, Bama, and Imayam.

Education Born in Salem, Tamil Nadu, in 1935, to Paul David Devanandan and Hannah (nee Amaruvati) as the second daughter, Lakshmi lost her mother, when she was barely two years old. Her father re-married. Lakshmi received her undergraduate degree in English literature from the University of Madras and her postgraduate degree from University of Oxford. Her postgraduate work was on the work of R. K. Narayan.

Career She settled in the United Kingdom and she was the founder-trustee of SALIDAA (South Asian Diaspora Literature and Arts Archive) – an organisation archiving the work of British writers and artists of South Asian origin.

From 2003 to 2006 she was a Fellow of The Royal Literary Fund at University of East Anglia in Norwich, Norfolk, England.

She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2011 for services to literature.

Death She died of cancer on 6 May 2016 in Norwich, aged 80. 2016 The A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize for translation from a South Asian language, awarded by the Association for Asian Studies for Children, Women and Men, originally published as Kuzhandaigal, Pengal, Aangal by Sundara Ramaswamy, Penguin Books India