Karthika Naïr

Until the Lions: Echoes from the Mahabharata, her reworking of the foundational South Asian epic in multiple voices, won the 2015 Tata Literature Live Award for Book of the Year (India), and was highly commended at the 2016 Forward Prizes (UK). Les Oiseaux électriques de Pothakudi (Éditions Hélium/Actes-Sud, 2022) – her latest children’s book illustrated by Joëlle Jolivet – won the 2023 Prix Felipé for “ecological children’s literature”, and was shortlisted for the 2023 Jugendliteraturpreis or the Franco-German award for children’s literature.

Karthika Naïr’s play Beneath the Music, created and directed by Jay Emmanuel for Encounter Theatre, premiered at the Subiaco Arts Centre in Perth in May 2023. The dance performances she has scripted and co-scripted include Akram Khan’s multiple-award-winning DESH, and Until the Lions (adapted from a chapter of her eponymous book) and Carlos Pons Guerra’s Mariposa, a queer reimagining of Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly. She also scripted the updated spoken-word segments of Babel 7.16, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet site-responsive version for the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais des Papes at the 2016 Avignon Festival.

Naïr is the co-founder of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Antwerp-based dance company, Eastman, and executive producer of several of his and Damien Jalet’s works (Les Médusés, Puz/zle, Babel(Words)…).

Photo credit: Koen Broos