Rajesh Kumar (writer)

Rajesh Kumar is the pseudonym of KR Rajagopal,[1] a Tamil author of crime fiction.

Professional career

Kumar's first published story was in 1968[2] or 1969,[3] in the college magazine of Government Arts College, Coimbatore, where he earned a degree in botany.[4] He has attributed this to a prank by another student, who used Kumar's name when volunteering to submit a story for the magazine;[2] when his professor refused to allow Kumar to back out,[5] "the next day"[2] he "reluctantly" submitted "Vaazhndhu Kaatuvom", a love story.[5]

Later that year, he submitted the crime story "Unnai Vidamaatten" to a short story contest in Malai Murasu; this was the first story for which he was paid.[5]

In 1977, his work began appearing in Kumudam, starting with the short story "Idhu Nyayama".[5]

His first novel, Vaadagaiku Oru Uyir,[5] was published in 1980.[1] He subsequently told of how the editor of Kumudam had "seen a porter on a platform at Egmore Railway Station engrossed in one of [Kumar's] stories. The porter had also forgone customers just to finish the story. It was then that [the editor] decided to make [Kumar] write a novel."[3]

In 1986, his publisher asked him if he could produce a novel a month; as a result, he became a full-time writer.[5]

As of 2019, Kumar has written over 1500 novels; his son, for whom digitizing the novels into e-books is a full-time profession, has been able to locate "around 1,000" of them.[6] He has also written over 2000 short stories, and scripts for over 250 television series,[1] as well as the 2015 film Sandamarutham.[7]

In 2019, he announced that he was negotiating with Sathya Jyothi Films regarding adaptations of his work on Amazon Prime.[6]

Early life

Prior to writing full-time, Kumar spent five years teaching, with a degree in education from Ramakrishna Vidyalaya;[4] when he grew bored with this, he worked as a sales representative for an industrial rubber goods company.[7]

Pseudonym

To avoid being confused with two pre-existing Tamil authors named "KR Rajagopal", he created a pseudonym based on the names of his sister and his sister-in-law: Rajeshwari and Ananthakumar.[1]

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References
  1. Rajeshkumar's 50 Years of Writing, by Karthika Vasudevan; at Dinamani; published 26 July 2019
  2. Meet Rajesh Kumar, author of 1,500 novels, by Samanth Subramanian; published 7 September 2008; in mint; via Archive.org
  3. 50 yrs on, Rajesh Kumar still thrills his readers, by Vishnu Swaroop, in The Times of India; published 18 July 2019
  4. At 69, Rajesh Kumar - the king of Tamil pulp fiction is still at it, in The News Minute; published 18 June 2015
  5. Raja of the whodunit; by Akila Kannadasan; in The Hindu; published 25 April 2011; via Archive.org
  6. Guns & prose, by Akila Kannadasan, in The Hindu; published 30 March 2019
  7. Guns, guts and glory, by Akila Kannadasan; in The Hindu; published 10 June 2015
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