Excerpt from Luis Borges' newly translated lecture on Johnson and Boswell

Dr. Johnson was already fifty years old. He had published his dictionary, for which he was paid 1,500 pounds sterling—which became 1,600 when his publishers decided to give him one hundred more—when he finished. He was slowing down. He then published his edition of Shakespeare, which he finished only because his publishers had received payments from subscribers, so it had to be done. Otherwise, Dr. Johnson spent his time engaged in conversation.

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Orhan Pamuk interview/2

Maybe we’re not so interested in what is happening in London, but we’re interested in what’s happening in Zadie Smith’s new novel. I think the form has immense possibilities.

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Orhan Pamuk interview /1

Booker's Dozen: Colum McCann's TransAtlantic (review and author interview)

Review TransAtlantic
Readers and writers will find much to admire in McCann’s TransAtlantic: the birth of story, the sweeping narrative range spilling into numerous points of view, and the breathtaking details of life, flight, hope and death.

Colum McCann interview
It’s the idea of becoming an alternative historian that really interests me: a historian of the smaller, more anonymous moments. It’s a privileged position for the fiction writer, one that opens up a lot of pores – and sometimes wounds, as well.

Laurent Binet interview

"It was complicated. to be faithful to character, to facts; not to make things up and to resist the temptation to make things up. And so I felt it was an interesting problem and I decided to share all my thoughts about it. And you could see all my doubts, questions. Instead of erasing my mistakes or erasing when I couldn't resist the temptation to make it up, to use it for a discussion with the reader.'' 

Writers are of two kinds: Martin Amis

"A great part of writing is hoping to make things as nice as possible for the reader — be a good host, have them put their feet up by the fire, pull up a chair, get out a good wine. The writer who loves the reader always feels that; Nabokov would always give you his best chair.

But there have been one or two writers who didn’t give a shit about the reader, like Joyce — partly because he had patronage, he didn’t need the reader to earn a living. And Henry James, who went off the reader in a huge way, which is why those last few novels became impenetrable. If you look at early James, he’s almost middlebrow, then you get The ambassadors  this incredibly convoluted thing. Joyce and James became bad hosts: If you wandered into their house you wouldn’t be welcomed. You’d stagger around while they were in the kitchen making some vile concoction which might amuse you, but it would taste disgusting and eccentric.

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Booker's Dozen: The Kills by Richard House

                              The Idea behind The Kills
"When I was about half way through writing The Kills, I began wondering, what’s the worth of fiction? What does fiction do? I think most writers get to this point where you walk into a bookstore and you see thousands and thousands of books, and you wonder what the worth of that is. Are you just getting more trees chopped down?
Then I read Bolano’s novel 2666 and was inspired by how an idea can be extended across such a vast landscape. It seemed to me that that kind of enquiry was entirely worthwhile. As a reader I felt I was being engaged and entertained with a thriller, but also given a space where difficult ethical issues were being discussed. I loved how intelligent that was. I wanted to do that – to do something where a reader could be involved in the stories as thrillers, but also able to connect the pieces."

Longlist for 2013 Man Booker Prize is interesting without big name authors

The longlist for the 2013 Man Booker prize for fiction, announced today, has a diverse and international flavour, with authors from Malaysia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

Margaret Atwood joins the call against ethnic cleansing in Israel

An Open Letter by Canadian writers
We, the undersigned, urge Israeli leaders to heed the call by David Grossman, Amos Oz, AB Yehoshua and 21 other Israeli writers to halt, immediately and permanently, the eviction of about 1000 Palestinians from their homes in various villages in South Hebron, West Bank (occupied Palestinian territory), in order to clear land for an Israeli army firing zone. These Palestinian villagers have inhabited their homes for several centuries. Evicting them would violate international law and cause extreme hardship.

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Martin Amis on writers' business

"...and all writers know this, that they’re exposing themselves a hundred per cent when they write a book. You can write a poem without giving much away but a novel tells the right kind of reader everything… what you do for someone like John Self is you take the one per cent of your character that is like that with the gamble, the strong hunch, that everyone has one per cent of him in them and then you make a whole character out of it. But it’s round the edges and the way it’s shaped, the decisions the writer is making – a good reader can get the whole picture from that.” 

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 Martin Amis interview

Adam Bodor interview

I do not think of this when I write, nor do I think of the reader, it would only cause problems, as speculation, or even calculation, would enter the creative process, depriving writing from its virginity, its original value. I only obey my own artistic expectations when I write, and when I tell only as much as I do. This may sound as a facile procedure, but I only keep in mind the fact that I am not omniscient, I cannot always look behind the facade of things and characters, I do not know everything about the real motives of the story. So it is the sheer spectacle that remains, often with certain riddles and gaps that the reader may or may not fill. I must pay attention to providing the reader's imagination with data that make her the writer's partner to a certain extent.

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's 2006 Urdu novel creates buzz in English translation

 The Mirror Of Beauty

I was hoping that if young people read this book, they will learn more about themselves – where they came from, how they were formed — the pain of separation, of discontinuity [from] what the world was before 1857. Though it was already crumbling, they had a world which was self-conscious, which was sure of its self-worth, which could match with any other culture or any other society anywhere – but for the adverse information and propaganda handed out to us by our colonial master.
- Shamsur Rahman Faruqi in an interview with The NYT

Tan Twan Eng interview

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpuf

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpI feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpuf

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpuf

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpuf

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpuf

I feel that as a writer you're alone in your own boat in this vast ocean; you're not thinking about other people. I've always worked alone, and I prefer to work alone, so being part of a generation hasn't been a factor for me.
- See more at: http://asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Interview&id=20&curr_index=37&curPage=archive#sthash.9yr5CVrX.dpuf

Deborah Levy on writing and reading

"...writing and reading aren’t about always knowing where we are going or declaring our certainties – it is about airing our doubts because it is our doubts that are the route to getting into the whole mystery of life."

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Deborah Levy on mainstream literary publishing

Fate of novels and novelists

"It was Orwell who said the only real critic of literature is Time. It winnows out the grain from the chaff. Unfortunately, where novels are concerned, it doesn’t. Novels that “last” typically do so by happenstance. Take, for example, the classic book of our year, 2013, the novel that has done wonders for the sale of silk shirts in Jermyn Street. Have a guess. How much money did The Great Gatsby make for Scott Fitzgerald in his lifetime? Eight thousand dollars (less than the cost of Jay Gatsby’s “custom Duesenberg” automobile). In the last year of Fitzgerald’s life, Gatsby earned its author barely enough to buy him lunch. Fitzgerald was, he said, when he received that last royalty statement, “a forgotten man”.

Chika Unigwe: Every line costs me sweat and blood

I embark every new story, every new novel with self-doubt. Every line costs me sweat and blood. I polish and polish, because I never think it is quite good enough. I don’t think that’s ever going to stop.

Why Vikram Seth failed to deliver "A Suitable Girl" in time

The news: Vikram Seth fails to deliver the ms of A Suitable Girl in time, and his publisher now demands million dollar refund from him.

I remember when I read the news that Seth was writing "A Suitable Girl" as sequel to "A Suitable Boy" and was being paid a huge advance for it, I wondered who was the crazier of the two: his publisher or the author himself? Could it really be a viable deal, all things considered?

A Suitable Boy was a long, boring story which Seth had, in all probablity, churned out with efforts. I don't know how it climbed the bestseller list.May be the readers at that time wanted to have a taste of India, may be it was something noble in the early phase of Indian writing in English, or may be his publisher went overboard with its publicity campaign, or may be due to effect of all these things put together.

Times have changed. So have readers' taste and preference. Who would be interested in A Suitable Girl  in these times? Does the publishing company, in its new avatar, realize it now?

Vikram Seth is no ordinary hack. He must have realized it too that it was no longer possible for him to plod through such a stupid theme. Writer's  block must have waylaid him.

So don't blame Seth. It was an absurd and ludicrous deal, and the ineviable has happened.A lesson both for the publisher and the writer.

Uday Prakash: A writer with a difference

“A writer,” he says, “doesn’t have any place in society, in its hierarchy. I feel my dignity when I am in my room, when I am with my books and papers. When I go outside…” He doesn’t finish his sentence. 

Tehelka has a comprehensive coverage of  Uday Prakash, the angst-ridden Hindi writer, who writes with great empathy about Mohandases (the underdogs) and hates the powerful, the rich and New Delhi's well-connected writers  in an odd but intense fashion..

Hari Kunzru's idea of self

I’m interested in the self. I’m trying to get a slightly more sophisticated understanding of subjectivity than that which is often presented in narrative fiction. Firstly, we maintain the fiction that we are continuous, and that we are substantially the same throughout our lives, but I think we are more broken up than that. The way that we actually experience the world is more complicated. We are in some ways swarms rather than bounded individuals. Our sense of self branches out of a lot of neurological processes working in tandem; you could say that the self is an effect or an aura. These things are important for fiction to engage with.

Naveen Kishore Quote

"I publish what I wish to. My presence in the U.K. and the U.S. is in itself an interesting reversal of traditional market strategies! It also offers a model that no longer suggests that Indian publishers must buy rights only for India. Seagull buys world rights, because our distribution through the University of Chicago Press allows us to sell across the world. It is a globalised world; your geographical location is of no consequence. The market has a responsibility too, you know! The market must learn to find you. And it does. It takes time, but it does."

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Naveen Kishore on Mo Yan 

Karl Ove Knausgaard interview

"I can’t speak for other writers, but I write to create something that is better than myself, I think that’s the deepest motivation, and it is so because I’m full of self-loathing and shame. Writing doesn’t make me a better person, nor a wiser and happier one, but the writing, the text, the novel, is a creation of something outside of the self, an object, kind of neutralized by the objectivity of literature and form; the temper, the voice, the style; all in it is carefully constructed and controlled. This is writing for me: a cold hand on a warm forehead. "