Renowned playwright, actor and film director Girish Karnad has been chosen for this year’s Tata Literature Live! Lifetime Achievement Award. The award will be conferred on him at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai on November 19.

The award is a recognition instituted to celebrate and salute outstanding contribution to the Indian literary space. The past recipients include writers Amitav Ghosh in 2016, Kiran Nagarkar in 2015, MT Vasudevan Nair in 2014, Khushwant Singh in 2013, Sir VS Naipaul in 2012, and Mahashweta Devi in 2011.

Karnad saw the award as honoring him as a playwright. "When the Tata Literature Live! honors me as a playwright, I feel enveloped by the warmth rolling in wave after wave----from across languages, cultures, and even from bygone generations--- saying to me,’ Well done!’ What more could one want? This is the moment a playwright lives for."

Theatre, he said, "demands the involvement of so many other professionals giving their best ---the director, the crew, even the costume assistant or the prompter. This is what makes theatre such an intricate world, a febrile network of human relationships woven in words, and this is why when, at the end of it all, one is told that one has succeeded, it is such an exhilarating experience.

Recipient of the 1998 Jnanapeeth award, Karnad has also been honored with the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan awards. He is celebrated internationally for his plays such as the critically acclaimed Yayati (1961), the historical Tughlaq (1964), and his three seminal works Hayavadana(1971), Nagamandala(1988) and Taledanda(1990). These works link folklore, mythology, and history while tackling the contemporary crisis of the modern man.

He has also been active in Indian cinema directing ’Kanooru Heggadithi’ (1999), and donning the actor’s role in Iqbal (2005) and Life Goes On (2009). In the past, he has also won four Filmfare Awards, three for Best Director - Kannada for Vamsha Vriksha (1972), Kaadu (1974), Ondanondu Kaladalli 1978 and one for Best Screenplay for Godhuli with B.V. Karanth in 1980.