Born in 1947 at Silchar, Assam, Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee did his M.A. in English Literature with a Post-Graduate certificate in English teaching from the Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad. He taught English literature at a Gauhati University college till 1985. 

In 1985 he joined the Editorial Department of the prestigious Encyclopedia of Indian Literature Project undertaken by the Sahitya Akademi. In 1988 he took charge of Sahitya Akademi’s Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata as its Regional Secretary where the nature of his work involved conceptualizing and publishing of books in five languages, organizing literary seminars, symposia and translation workshops in the region. During the nineties, Bhattacharjee gradually specialized in Indian and Comparative Literature, and taught a course in the Post-Graduate Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University (1993-97) for four years from 1993 to 1997.

In 1998, Bhattacharjee was appointed Director of the National Book Trust (NBT), a premier organization under the Department of Education, Government of India, engaged in promotion of books and reading habits. During the term (1998-2002) in NBT, he conducted celebration of the Year of the Book (2001), declared by the Government of India and served on panels of many national and international bodies. In 1993, Bhattacharjee visited the United States of America and researched in the field of ancient manuscripts as an Associate Fellow of the Bienecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library in the Yale University. In 1996 he led a delegation of Indian writers to Moscow during the Festival of India in Russia. Bhattacharjee was also associated with a project entitled ‘Towards an Integrated History of the SAARC Literature’ and worked at the British Museum and India Office Library in 1997 under an Indian Council for Cultural Relations Excursion Grant.

Bhattacharjee has been associated with respected banners as advisor/commentator/ script-writer for literature-based documentaries and features. He has also been regularly contributing aricles and reviews in the literary pages of the newspapers and journals including The Statesman, The Times of India, The Book Review and The Biblio. An accomplished translator from Bengali into English and vice-versa, Bhattacharjee’s English translation of Mahasveta Devi’s Armani Champar Gachh published by Seagull Books of Calcutta has been critically acclaimed. Bhattacharjee returned to the Sahitya Akademi in 2002 and is currently Editor, Indian Literature, a bi-monthly journal published by the Akademi.

He can be reached at the email address: nkb2k@hotmail.com