Namita Gokhale (born 26 January 1956) is an Indian novelist, editor and publisher. She is a co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, which has grown into one of the largest free literary gatherings in the world. She has written more than twenty books, from the satirical Paro: Dreams of Passion (1984) to Things to Leave Behind (2016), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2021.
Quick Facts
| Birth name | Namita Pant |
| Born | 26 January 1956, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Age | 70 |
| Occupation | Novelist, editor, festival director |
| Education | Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi |
| Spouse | Rajiv Gokhale (d.) |
| Children | 2 daughters |
| Honour | Sahitya Akademi Award (2021) |
| Known for | Paro; the Himalayan trilogy; Jaipur Literature Festival |
Early Life
Namita Pant was born in Lucknow and brought up in Nainital, in the Kumaon hills, by her aunts and her grandmother, in a family of Kumaoni Brahmins. She studied English literature at Jesus and Mary College in Delhi but left without a degree after a dispute over the syllabus. At eighteen she married Rajiv Gokhale, and in the late 1970s the two of them published Super, a popular film magazine, from Bombay.
Career
Her first novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, a sharp comedy about the rich and ambitious of Delhi and Bombay, was published in 1984 and caused a stir for its frank humour. In her thirties she survived cancer and lost her husband, experiences that fed into Gods, Graves and Grandmother (1994) and The Book of Shadows (1999).
Three novels are set in her native Kumaon: A Himalayan Love Story (1996), The Book of Shadows and Things to Leave Behind, which follows several generations in Nainital and Almora from 1840 to 1912. She has also retold the Mahabharata for young readers, written about the goddess Shakti and the figure of Sita, and published The Blind Matriarch (2021), set during the pandemic.
She helped launch the festival in 2006 with the writer William Dalrymple and the producer Sanjoy K. Roy, and she takes particular charge of its programming in Indian languages. She also founded the Mountain Echoes festival in Bhutan and co-founded the publishing house Yatra Books, which specialises in translation.
Personal Life
Her husband was the son of the politician and Union minister H. R. Gokhale. She has two daughters and lives in Delhi.
Selected Books
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Namita Gokhale born?
Namita Gokhale was born on 26 January 1956 in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India and is 70 years old.
What is Namita Gokhale known for?
Known for: Paro; the Himalayan trilogy; Jaipur Literature Festival.
Featured image: Namita Gokhale speaks at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2025. Photo by Sriya Sarkar, licensed under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
