Noted literary critic G. S. Amur, 95, passed away in his sleep at his residence in Bengaluru on Monday morning. He was suffering from age-related illness and was not keeping well for sometime now.
It was just over a week ago that Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) announced this year’s Nrupatunga award for lifetime’s work in literary criticism to G S Amur. He passed away before even receiving the award.
G S Amur was born in Bommanahalli of Dharwad district in 1925 and went on to become an English professor and had a long career in various universities of Karnataka and Maharashtra. A noted critic of English literature, he has extensively written about the works of R K Narayan and Raja Rao, both from the State.
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However, in the latter part of his career he took to writing in Kannada about Kannada literature and is regarded as one of the finest literary critics of the language. “He was respected by one and all, because he never fell prey to either camps or even literary movements. He wrote criticism on all kinds of literature without any favour and was a dispassionate critic that gave his opinion gravitas in the Kannada literary world,” remembers another writer and critic K. Marulasiddappa. “Over the last four decades his body of work has been huge both in terms of quantity and quality,” he added.
His works on the poetry of D. R. Bendre, and on the works of A. N. Krishnaraya, Sriranga and on the evolution of the Kannada novel is highly acclaimed and has a vast readership even today.
He was awarded the Kendra Sahitya Akademi award in 1996 and the highest literary award of Kannada, the Pampa award in 2006.
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