A.R. Venkatachalapathy historian, author and translator, is Professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has taught at universities in Tirunelveli, Chennai, Chicago, and Singapore. Chalapathy writes in Tamil and English and has published widely on the social, cultural and intellectual history of colonial Tamil Nadu. His publications include In Those Days There Was No Coffee: Writings in Cultural History; The Province of the Book: Scholars, Scribes, and Scribblers in Colonial Tamilnadu; (ed.) Chennai, Not Madras, (ed.), and In the Tracks of the Mahatma: The Making of a Documentary.
Venkatachalapathy has translated Sundara Ramaswamy’s J.J.: Some Jottings and, in collaboration with M.L. Thangappa, has published two volumes of classical Tamil poetry in the Penguin classics: Love Stands Alone and Red Lilies and Frightened Birds. He is the winner of the V.K.R.V. Rao Prize (2007).