Brishti Guha has a PhD from Princeton. After teaching abroad for some time, she now teaches economics at JNU. She is an economist in love with Sanskrit literature and ancient Indian history. Besides publishing economics papers in international academic journals, and writing prolifically for the popular press, she has published translations, retellings, and essays in literary magazines including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Samovar (Strange Horizons), Sci-Phi Journal, Mercurian – A Theatrical Translation Review, Eye to the Telescope, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, and several others.
Brishti has also appeared frequently as a guest speaker on podcasts like Immortal India with Amish (where she speaks about the decipherment of the Indus valley script and about their society, while another episode is about marriage and relationships in ancient India) and Sangam Talks (she features in a number of episodes on Indus valley script, surgery, women’s status in ancient India, and on the special features of Sanskrit and Sanskrit literature).
Brishti’s current book, represented by A Suitable Agency, innovatively uses her own translations from Sanskrit literature as a lens to showcase ancient Indian history. While ancient history usually relies only on archaeology, epigraphy, and coins, Brishti uses the fact that the literature of a particular place and time affords a deeply personal glimpse into the lives of the people of that era. She focuses on kings who were writers themselves, or whose contemporaries and near-contemporaries were poets or playwrights. She covers some kings with interesting achievements, but who are absent from our history textbooks. She also talks about some very well-known kings, using literature to shed light on historical mysteries involving them, or exploring lesser-known aspects of their lives.