U R Anantha Murthy was a Telugu writer and critic, and one of the proponents of the Navya Movement. He was honored with the Jnanpith Award for the Kannada language in 1994, and the  Padma Bhushan Award in 1998. He was one of the finalists for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. He also served as the Vice-Chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala during the late 1980s.