Makarand R. Paranjape (born 31 August 1960) is an Indian novelist, poet, a former Director at Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla and, since 1999, a Professor of English in the Centre for English Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.^[1][2]

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Makarand Paranjape
Born	31 August 1960 Ahmedabad, Gujarat
Nationality	Indian
Other names	makrandparanspe
Education	MA, PhD in English Literature
Alma mater	St Stephen's College, Delhi University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, USA
Occupations	Former Director of Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (Shimla) Professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi)

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Makarand R. Paranjape was born in 1960 in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. He was educated at the Bishop Cotton Boys' School in Bangalore followed by a B.A. (Hons.) in English at St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, in 1980. Thereafter, he joined the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from where he received his M.A. in English Literature and, subsequently, a PhD, in 1985, on the topic Mysticism in Indian English Poetry.^{[citation needed]}

Makarand Paranjape had started his career in 1980 as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and returned to India in 1986 to join the University of Hyderabad, first as lecturer and then reader. In 1994, he joined the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Delhi as an associate professor, and between 1999–2018, he served as professor of English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.^[3][4]

In his coffee-table book of poems published in January 2022 as Identity's Last Secret, Paranjape discussed how he "came out of a difficult relationship." ^{[citation needed]} In 2013, Makarand R. Paranjape published a novel called Body Offering.^[8] The novel is a tale of a middle-aged man's extra-marital affair with a woman 25 years younger ^{[citation needed]} than him. The Sunday Guardian dubbed the book as one "that walked in the long shadow cast" by Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabakov's 1955 novel Lolita.^[9]

In 1987, Paranjape married Sarina, a graduate student at UIUC.^[10] In 2006, he married^{[lower-alpha 1]} Devaki Singh, daughter of Arun Singh.^[11] They divorced in 2014. ^{[citation needed]} He is now married to Gayatri Iyer.^[12]

• ICCR Chair in Indian Studies, National University of Singapore, August 2010 onwards.
• October–December 2014: Inaugural DAAD-Eric Auerbach Visiting Chair in World Literatures at the University of Tübingen, Germany.