Dom Moraes

Mumbai, June 2 (PTI): Noted writer, columnist and poet Dom Moraes died after a heart attack this afternoon, family sources said. He was 65.

Moraes, who had been suffering from cancer, died in sleep at his residence in Bandra.

He is survived by his only son, who resides in the UK.

Moraes, the son of former Indian Express editor Frank Moraes, has authored many books on poetry, fiction and also travelogues.

He came to India in the 1980s and was a regular contributor for the Afternoon.

His funeral will be held tomorrow evening at Sewree.

Born in Mumbai in 1938, Moraes penned his first poem when he was 12 and published his first book of poems, A Beginning, which won him the Hawthorne Prize for the best work of imagination, in 1958.

He remains the first non-English person to win this prize and also the youngest.

As a child, Moraes travelled extensively, visiting Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand and the whole of South Asia.

In 1960, his second book of verse became the autumn choice of the Poetry Book Society.

In 1965, Moraes’ third book of verse appeared and got much critical acclaim. Apart from this, he also published Beldam and Others.

Moraes has also edited magazines in London, Hong Kong and New York and had been a war correspondent and an official of a UN agency.

He also wrote a biography of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Moraes also scripted and partially directed over 20 television documentaries from England, India, Cuba, and Israel for the BBC and ITV.

He also authored The Long Strider, A Variety of Absences: The collected memoirs of Dom Moraes, Out of God’s Oven: Travels in a Fractured Land, The Penguin Book of Indian Journeys.