Leela Devi Panikar

Leela Devi Panikar is a fiction writer currently living in Hong Kong. Her passion for writing clearly shows in her short story collections -- Floating Petals and Bathing Elephants -- that reflect her extensive travels and knowledge of various cultures. She has won awards from the BBC and Turner in the UK, and the South China Morning Post and Radio Three in Hong Kong. Individual stories have appeared in various journals and periodicals.

Floating Petals

Leela's story "Penang" was the winner of the international BBC World "My Hometown" 200-word writing competition: "It stood out for me because I think it compressed, in a really magnificent way, so many aspects of the hometown in 199 words ... it terrifically evoked all the different senses, the sights, the smells, and the tastes as well ... a little masterpiece of compression, of miniature atmospheric evocation." Peter Kemp, fiction editor of the UK Sunday Times.

"Leela's stories are gems ... tiny, polished and precious. No need to skim through the opening in anticipation of the good parts. It's all good. Slow down and savour every sentence." Marjorie Sullivan, writer.

Bathing Elephants

The six stories set in Thailand, Iraq, China, Nepal and Myanmar show a simplicity of expression and brevity. They have this lilting, haunting, melancholic quality that touches the heart deeply and wrings one inside out. They portray the aspirations of ordinary people; tears of grief and longing and eventually eternal hope. Evocative prose leaves readers spellbound and mesmerized for days after putting the book away.

Bathing Elephants is "For all those we shared the tsunami with, here and gone."

Her third collection, Phantom Visitor, is to be published soon.