Winner of the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award for the novel Cuckold, he is author of the landmark Marathi novel Saat Sakkam Trechalis published in English by Katha as Seven Sixes Are Forty Three. Nagarkar, born in Mumbai in 1942, has often spoken of his childhood, of how his grandfather was ostracized because he broke away from the vice-like grip of the Chitpavan Brahmin community, about how the Marathi people have never forgiven him for writing in English, and how his hybrid work has never been fully accepted.