Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla
Indian East African American novelist, writer, screenwriter and film producer
Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla (born June 5, 1978) is an American writer. He is known for his novel Ode to Lata published in 2002, that was adapted to a film in 2008 under the title The Ode. He has also published the novel The Two Krishnas in 2011, which was released as The Exiles in India.
Early life
Dhalla's great-grandparents were Ismailis who immigrated to Kenya from India. An only child, he was mostly raised by his mother's parents in Mombasa. He decided that he wanted to be a writer when he was five years old. The same year, his father was murdered, and his mother returned to Mombasa to be with her son.
Career
At 13 years old, he published his first article on infertility in a national magazine VIVA.
An excerpt from Ode to Lata was featured in the award-winning anthology Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America (Rutgers), which went on to win the 18th Annual American Book Award. The Los Angeles Times Book Review hailed Dhalla's debut as "an achievement" (Sunday, 24 March 2002) and Christopher Rice called it "a rare, great novel" (book jacket). Ode to Lata is reported to be the first South Asian gay novel ever to be reviewed by The Los Angeles Times and to be excerpted by Genre Magazine.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla” is indian East African American novelist, writer, screenwriter and film producer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ghalib, Shiraz and Dhalla, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5555277. VIAF identifies the subject as 34128601. The Library of Congress control number is no2002072757. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 2002, 2008 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.