: आनंद रतन यादव) is a Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 writer from Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

.

He was born on November 30, 1935 in the village Kagal near Kolhapur, Maharastra in a poor family. His illiterate farmer father was not in favor of educating him. So young Yadav ran away from home, and, facing many hardships, received education as high as a doctorate from Pune University.

Literary work

Yadav was one of the early writers of Marathi Gramin Sahitya (literature pertaining to rural life in Maharashtra).

His novel "Zombi" (झोंबी) (meaning “fight against all odds”) won a Sahitya Akademi Award

Sahitya Akademi Award

Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...

 in 1990. The novel is an autobiographical story of a young boy, his loving mother, his life of utter poverty, and his eagerness to receive education.

Yadav wrote three sequels to autobiographical "Zombi" (झोंबी):
"Nangarani" (नांगरणी) (meaning “cultivation of the soil”), "Gharabhinti" (घरभिंती ) (meaning “housewalls”), and "Kachawel" (काचवेल) (meaning “a vine of pieces of glass”).

The following is a list of Yadav's other literary works. They comprise scholarly books related to Marathi literature as well as fictions.

• १९६० नंतरची सामाजिक स्थिती आणि साहित्यातील नवे प्रवाह
• साहित्याची निर्मिति प्रक्रिया
• ग्रामीण साहित्य : स्वरूप व समस्या
• ग्रामीणता : साहित्य आणि वास्तव
• ग्रामसंस्कृती
• मराठी साहित्य : समाज आणि संस्कृती
• मराठी लघुनिबंधाचा इतिहास
• कलेचे कातडे
• साहित्यिकाचा गाव
• आदिताल
• सैनिक हो, तुमच्यासाठी
• शेवटची लढाई
• आत्मचरित्र मीमांसा
• झोंबी
• नांगरणी
• घरभिंती
• काचवेल
• गोतावळा
• भय
• माऊली
• नटरंग
• भूमीकन्या
• उखडलेली झाडं
• झाडवाटा
• स्पर्शकमळे
• माळावरची मैना
• पाणभवरे
• डवरणी
• खळाळ
• मळ्याची माती
• मातीखालची माती
• मायलेकरं
• एकलकोंडा
• घरजावई
• उगवती मने
• लोकसखा ज्ञानेश्वर
• संतसूर्य तुकाराम

82nd Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Yadav was elected as the president of the 82nd Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan is a conference for literary discussions by Marathi writers. Though the conference has sometimes been held in a town outside the Indian state of Maharashtra, it is typically held annually in one of the towns in Maharashtra where Marathi is the mother tongue...

 which was held at Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar is a city and a municipal council in Satara district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a hill station located in the Western Ghats range. With one of the few evergreen forests of the world, it served as the summer capital of Bombay province during the British Raj.-Geography...

 in March 2009. However, he resigned from that position four days before the sammelan in response to protests primarily by members of the varkari

Varkari

Varkari is a Vaishnava religious movement within the bhakti spiritual tradition of Hinduism, geographically associated with the Indian states of Maharashtra and northern Karnataka. Varkaris worship Vithoba , the presiding deity of Pandharpur, regarded as a form of Krishna, an Avatar of Vishnu...

 mahamandal against some of the material in his biographical novel "Santasurya Tukaram

Tukaram

Sant Tukaram was a prominent Varkari Sant and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement in India.Sant Tukaram was born and lived most of his life in Dehu, a town close to Pune in Mahārāshtra, India. He was born to a couple with the family name "More", the descendent of the Mourya Clan with first...

" (संतसूर्य तुकाराम). The mahamandal members had demanded his resignation with a warning that they would disrupt the sammelan if their demand was not met
.