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{{Use American English|date=December 2011}}
{{Infobox writer 
| name = Richard Crasta
| image = Richard Crasta.jpg
| birth_date = 1952
| nationality = American
| birth_place = [[Bangalore]], India
| occupation = Writer
| genre = fiction, non-fiction
| website = {{URL|richardcrasta.com}}
}}

'''Richard Crasta''' ({{lang-knn|रीचर्ड क्रास्ता}} ([[Devanagari]])) is an [[Indian American]] writer and novelist. He grew up in Mangalore, lived in the United States for twenty years, mostly in the New York metropolitan region, and now spends much of his time in Asia. His works include the comic and frankly sexual coming of age novel, ''The Revised Kama Sutra'' (published in seven languages and ten countries to date), and fiction and nonfiction books such as ''Impressing the Whites: The New International Slavery''; ''Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex''; the semi-fictional ''What We All Need''; and ''The Killing of an Author''.

==Early life and education==
[[File:Mummy Me.jpg|thumb|200px|A one-year-old Richard Crasta being held by his mother, Christine]]

Richard Crasta, son of the late John Baptist Crasta and Christine Crasta (''née'' D'Souza), was born in [[Bangalore]], India. He had two brothers and a sister.<ref name="rc2"/> His father John, son of Alex and Nathalia Crasta, originally hailed from [[Kinnigoli]] in [[South Canara]] district, about 20 miles from [[Mangalore]]. John was a [[World War II]] veteran and prisoner-of-war who survived a Japanese prison camp, and his war memoir was published by his son under the title, "Eaten by the Japanese: The Memoir of an Unknown Indian Prisoner of War."<ref name="Mang">{{cite web
| url = http://mangalorean.com/browsearticles.php?arttype=mom&momid=11
| title = Mr. Richard Crasta [Mangalorean Star: October, 2003]
| publisher = Mangalorean.com
| accessdate = 2011-12-26}}</ref>

Richard had a strict middle-class Catholic upbringing and grew up in [[Mangalore]] in the 1960s and early 1970s.<ref name="bio">{{cite web
|url = http://www.richardcrasta.com/richard_crasta_bio.htm
|title = Biography of Richard Crasta
|publisher = RichardCrasta.com
|accessdate = 2008-12-10
|url-status = dead
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20081105092624/http://www.richardcrasta.com/richard_crasta_bio.htm
|archivedate = 2008-11-05
}}</ref> He began writing when he was ten.<ref name="q2">{{harvnb|The Composite Interview with Richard Crasta|loc=When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer?|Ref=int}}</ref> An important factor in his development was the church and the convent school to which he was sent as a boy, and the secondary school of his adolescence.<ref name="rc2"/><ref name="q3">{{harvnb|The Composite Interview with Richard Crasta|loc=What inspired you to write this novel? How did you decide upon its title?|Ref=int}}</ref>

He completed his [[Bachelor of Arts]] (BA) in ''Economics, History and Political Science'' from the [[University of Mysore]] in 1972.<ref name="rc2"/> He was eventually accepted into the [[Indian Administrative Service]] (IAS), through which he became the [[Assistant Commissioner]] and [[Sub-Divisional Magistrate]] of [[Chickballapur]] Subdivision in [[Kolar district]] and [[Belgaum]] Subdivision in [[Belgaum district]].<ref name="rc2"/> Later, he became Special Deputy Commissioner of [[Shimoga district]].<ref name="rc2"/> He later served in the IAS for 4 years.<ref name="rc2"/> Crasta travelled to the United States in 1979, enrolling in the [[American University]] in [[Washington, D.C.]].<ref name="rc2"/> He worked for a New York literary agency and taught English at a New York college through 1981, and completed his [[Master of Arts]] (MA) degree in ''Literature and Communication''.<ref name="rc2"/> He received his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in ''Creative Writing'' from [[Columbia University]] in 1987.<ref name="rc2">{{harvnb|Nelson|2000|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=TlXCVdq9DWEC&printsec=frontcover#PPA76,M1 76]|Ref=nel}}</ref>

==Career==
Crasta began his novel ''The Revised Kamasutra: A Novel of Colonialism and Desire'' while taking courses at Columbia University. After more than eight years of work, ''The Revised Kamasutra'' appeared in India in 1993. Subsequent editions appeared in Britain, the United States, Germany, Italy, and a few other countries.<ref name="rc2"/>

A collection of humorous, political, personal, and satirical essays titled ''Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex'', appeared in India in 1997. Crasta edited and contributed to essays ''Eaten by the Japanese: The Memoirs of an Unknown Indian Soldier'', by John Baptist Crasta, his father, in India in 1998. In the 1998 U.S. edition, and in one or two European translations of his novel, he used the
name ''Avatar Prabhu'', reverting to Richard Crasta in 2000.<ref name="rc77">{{harvnb|Nelson|2000|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=TlXCVdq9DWEC&printsec=frontcover#PPA77,M1 77]|Ref=nel}}</ref>

In 2000, he published ''Impressing the Whites''. Five years later, he published two other books, ''What We All Need'', entirely his own, and ''Fathers, Rebels and Dreamers'', compiled with two of his Mangalorean friends Arunachalam Kumar, conservationist, and Ralph Nazareth, poet and professor. In 2008, he published ''The Killing of an Author'', a literary and publishing autobiography and critique of the publishing industry.

==Philosophical views==
{{BLP sources section|date=December 2016}}
{| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em; font-size: 85%; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="0"
| style="text-align: left; font-family:'Times New Roman',serif; font-weight:bold; padding:0px 5px; vertical-align: top; font-size: large; color: grey;" |
|Charity, forgiveness, redemption – all these have stayed with me though I'm no church-goer. I like this essence of Christianity that is not there in George Bush.<ref name="phi">{{harvnb|The many faces of Crasta|loc=What is your philosophical axis? Where are you coming from?|Ref=h1}}</ref>
| style="text-align: left; font-family:'Times New Roman',serif; font-weight:bold; padding:0px 5px; vertical-align: bottom; font-size: large; color: grey" | "
|-
|colspan=3 style="text-align:center;" |–Richard Crasta in an interview to ''[[The Hindu]]''
|}

Ideologically, Crasta describes himself as "a profound, all-round sceptic whose religion is literature, laughter, and love".<ref name="rc">{{harvnb|The Composite Interview with Richard Crasta|loc=What would you say is the source of your individuality and quirky viewpoint? How would you describe your philosophy of life?|Ref=int}}</ref>

==Works==
* ''The Revised Kamasutra: A Novel of Colonialism and Desire'' (1993)
* ''Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex'' (1997)
* ''Impressing the Whites: The New International Slavery'' (2000)
* ''One little Indian'' (2003)
* ''What We All Need: An Anti-Terrorist Book of Incompletions, Unsafe Love, and Writing While Brown'' (2005)
* ''Fathers, Rebels and Dreamers'' (editor and co-author, along with Ralph Nazareth and Arunachalam Kumar) (2005)
* ''The Killing of an Author: Jackie Kennedy, Sonny Pfizer, Seven Little Ayatollahs and a Suicide Pact'' (2008)
* ''I Will NOT Go the F**k to Sleep'' (2011)

==Footnotes==
{{reflist}}

==References==
{{refbegin|2}}
*{{cite book
| title = Asian American Novelists: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook
| last = Nelson
| first = Emmanuel Sampath
| year = 2000
| publisher = Greenwood Publishing Group
| isbn = 978-0-313-30911-3
| url = https://archive.org/details/asianamericannov00nels_0
| url-access = registration
| accessdate = 2008-11-25
| ref = nel}}
*{{cite web
|title = Latest Interview with Richard Crasta
|year = 2008
|publisher = RichardCrasta.com
|url = http://www.richardcrasta.com/latest_interview.htm
|accessdate = 2008-12-10
|ref = li
|url-status = dead
|archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20090105233417/http://www.richardcrasta.com/latest_interview.htm
|archivedate = 2009-01-05
}}
*{{cite web
|title = The Composite Interview with Richard Crasta
|publisher = RichardCrasta.com
|url = http://www.richardcrasta.com/interview.htm
|accessdate = 2008-12-10
|ref = int
|url-status = dead
|archiveurl = https://www.webcitation.org/65qMlMK6z?url=http://www.richardcrasta.com/interview.htm
|archivedate = 2012-03-01
}}
*{{cite news
| url = http://www.hindu.com/mp/2005/10/18/stories/2005101800630100.htm
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20051226153246/http://www.hindu.com/mp/2005/10/18/stories/2005101800630100.htm
| url-status = dead
| archive-date = 2005-12-26
| author = Prashant G.N.
| date = 2005-10-18
| title = The many faces of Crasta
| newspaper = [[The Hindu]]
| accessdate = 2008-12-10|ref=h1}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
* [http://www.richardcrasta.com/ Richard Crasta's Official Website]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crasta, Richard}}
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:1952 births]]
[[Category:Indian male novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]]
[[Category:Mangaloreans]]
[[Category:Writers from Bangalore]]
[[Category:Indian Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:American Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Indian agnostics]]
[[Category:Indian sceptics]]
[[Category:American agnostics]]
[[Category:American skeptics]]
[[Category:University of Mysore alumni]]
[[Category:Columbia University School of the Arts alumni]]
[[Category:American University alumni]]
[[Category:Indian civil servants]]
[[Category:Indian emigrants to the United States]]
[[Category:American male novelists]]
[[Category:American novelists of Indian descent]]
[[Category:20th-century Indian novelists]]
[[Category:Novelists from Karnataka]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]

Richard Crasta - Revision history

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