NEW DELHI: Tributes poured in on Tuesday for prolific Indian writer and intellectual Sunil Gangopadhyay who died, aged 78, in Kolkata after suffering a heart attack.
The author of more than 200 books, which included novels, poetry and children's fiction, Gangopadhyay won several literary prizes, including India's prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985.
Celebrated novelist Amitav Ghosh, a fellow Bengali, offered a passionate farewell to Gangopadhyay, whom he described as "a great writer and a warm, kind and generous man".
Ghosh said Gangopadhyay had been a mainstay of life in Kolkata where he had nurtured a "cosmopolitan literary culture, where no one needed to feel excluded".
India's President Pranab Mukherjee hailed him one of the finest intellectuals of his generation who had "enriched Bengali literature through his unique style". (AFP)
