Gopinath Mohanty (1914–1991), winner of the Jnanpith award, and the first winner of the National Sahitya Akademi Award in 1955 - for his novel, Amrutara Santana - was a prolific Odia writer of the mid-twentieth century.
Satya Prakash Mohanty, Professor of English, Cornell University says: "In my opinion, Gopinath Mohanty is the most important Indian novelist in the second half of the twentieth century."