About Leela
Contemporary fiction
OUT NOW: A DISTANT VOICE IN THE DARKNESS
a novel published by 186 Publishing Limited
£8.99 paperback and £3.99 Kindle from Amazon; also shortly available to order from your actual bookshops!
Lots of people who read FRESH BEGINNINGS in the spring were kind enough to post short reviews of it on Amazon. If you read this new novel, do post a review if you can be bothered.
LAST FEBRUARY:
FRESH BEGINNINGS just out from Bridge House
An intriguing mixture of stories, all in Leela Dutt’s inimitable style – something here for everyone, and beautifully illustrated by Kate Attfield.Some are short and funny, some poignant – widows faced with losing their grandchildren, a daughter burying her father and dealing with a domineering mother. One endearing narrator is not human at all but still strikes a chord with us. Time travellers visit Hans Andersen’s Copenhagen; a young German boy is welcomed by some but by no means all in Hertfordshire just after the war. Perilous adventures in a hire car in the south of France are described by a lad who is unaware that at the very moment he’s telling us about his family holiday, London is under attack - a story first published by Bridge House in the anthology On This Day. A young Japanese car manufacturer encounters the strange people of the South Wales Valleys - and their grandfather who was a prisoner of war in Burma. Finally the life story of a Quaker celebrating her ninetieth birthday at the end of the century.Leela Dutt’s collection Fresh Beginnings will warm your heart and stay in your mind – it might even make you laugh!
Order from Bridgetown Cafe Bookshop, or Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and many other bookshops. It's free on Amazon Kindle.
If you are tempted to write a review smewhere, please send it to me as well!
see reviews of FRESH BEGINNINGS
For Leela's books click here
and for a few book reviews here
CURRENT WORK FOR SALE
Leela Dutt has written a wide range of contemporary fiction novels and short stories over the years. Raised in Golders Green by an Indian father and a Danish mother, she is an outsider. Living all of her adult life in Cardiff, Wales, she has been married to the philosopher Robin Attfield for 56 years and they have three children, seven grandchildren of whom six survive, and one great-granddaughter, Zara, who is pictured in the Gallery wearing her Black Lives Matter tee-shirt. Leela is a longstanding member of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Seen here, she is signing books on a day when she was excited that Wales was about to play...
TO ORDER BOOKS, GO TO SHOP
Or if you want to order the new collection, FRESH BEGINNINGS, go to Bridgetown Cafe Bookshop. Also available on Amazon, Waterstones and other places - but if you are not happy ordering online, get in touch with Leela
Education and Experience
After grammar school and reading history at Oxford, Leela briefly worked as a teacher. She then had a job selling dress fabrics in a snooty up-market Cardiff store, whose male manager complained about her untidy appearance (“Well, I was pregnant at the time, but all the same...”)
She later wrote for a local paper, then after achieving a degree in computing in her forties, she set up and managed an online database about housing research at Cardiff University. Leela also worked as a proof-reader and sub-editor for the Big Issue Cymru and wrote several book reviews for them.
She later wrote for a local paper, then after achieving a degree in computing in her forties, she set up and managed an online database about housing research at Cardiff University. Leela also worked as a proof-reader and sub-editor for the Big Issue Cymru and wrote several book reviews for them.
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