Bem Le Hunte

Bem Le Hunte (born 1964) is a British-Indian-Australian author whose internationally published novels, The Seduction of Silence (2001) and There, Where the Pepper Grows (2006) have gained her numerous positive reviews and a wide, appreciative readership in the Eastern and the Western world. Her first novel was shortlisted for the 2001 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Life and career

Before 1989

Bem Le Hunte was born in Kolkata, the fourth child in a family with an Indian mother and English father. She grew up in India and England, receiving her education at Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, West London. She then spent a year studying journalism before continuing on to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, from which she graduated with a BA in Social Anthropology and a doctorate in English Literature. She subsequently traveled the world, living in Japan and the United States, where she spent time in Chicago. She then returned to India, living in Delhi and working on short films for the United Nations during the International Decade of Women's Development.