S.L.Bhyrappa is an awardee of Saraswati Samman (The Highest award in India for Literature), Fellow of Sahitya Akademi. (The Highest Literary Body of India), National Professor for Literature, Honorary Doctorate from Six Universities and author of 24 highly regarded and bestselling novels written in Kannada (a south Indian language) most of which translated into all major fourteen Indian Languages including Sanskrit and English. Seminars have been and are being held on his novels all over India, volumes of literary criticism have been published on his works and have been the subject of about 20 PhD dissertations.
In addition to his profound knowledge of Indian philosophical and cultural traditions, Bhyrappa has since his childhood had intense personal experiences in both rural and urban milieu, like after having seen the death of his mother, two brothers and two sisters during his childhood and surviving the epidemic of plague himself, he was haunted by the meaning of death, which led him to the study of philosophy, in which he did his Masters and Doctorate. However, temperamentally he was an artist and turned to creative writing. His characters are deeply rooted in Indian soil.
The philosophical problems which are essentially studies of basic and fundamental values of life became the themes for his major novels some of which are translated into English like the titles, Family Tree, The crossing over, Parva, The Thread, Mandra, Caravan, Witness, Bitti (Autobiography of Bhyrappa ) The Veil, and his theses on Truth and Beauty. He recreated the greatest Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana into two great contemporary novels titled Parva and Uttara Kaanda.
Dr Bhyrappa is an avid listener of both Indian and Western classical music and has a keen eye for Art. Travelling has been his passion, has travelled across the globe touching the glaciers of poles, forests of Amazon, deserts of Africa, Europe and the United States. He has trekked in the Alps, the Rockies, Andes and in Fujiama, but the Himalayas remain his greatest passion.