G. V. Desani

Govindas Vishnoodas Desani or G. V. Desani (1909–2000) was a Kenyan-born, British-educated Indian writer and Buddhist scholar. The son of a merchant, he began his career as a journalist, and achieved fame with the cult novel All About H. Hatterr (1948), considered a fine example of midcentury modernism. He was for a time a university professor in America, and spent many years engaged in meditation at various monasteries. A second volume, Hali and Collected Stories, was published in 1991.

Born in 1909 of Indian parents in Nairobi, Kenya, Govindas Vishnoodas Desani spent his childhood in Sindh, now Pakistan. Known as a child prodigy, between his 7th and 12th year, he managed to run away from home twice and was expelled from school at thirteen as unteachable. At the third attempt to escape, he reached England. Not yet 18, and a minor, at the personal recommendation of the then Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in the British House of Commons, George Lansbury, he was admitted as a reader in the library of the British Museum.

At 19, he was one of the foreign correspondents serving newspapers from London. At 25, he was a correspondent of The Times of India, Reuters and the Associated Press. About that time, he was sponsored by the then Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, one of the great railway systems of India, as Lecturer on the antiquities of Rajputana, Ajmer and Delhi. A special circular, issued by the Director of Education, Delhi, stresses the great value of his lectures. Somewhere along the way he became known as G. V. Desani.

During World War II, Desani was back in Britain. Waiving their strict academic requirements, the Imperial Institute, the Council for Adult Education in the British Armed Forces, the London County Council, the Wiltshire County Council, and the Royal Empire Society accepted him as a lecturer and teacher.

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