2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize short lists

Is Aravind Adiga from Australia? We know he's an Indian, and lives in India.. Now, read the list.

Africa

Best Book
Damon Galgut (South Africa) The Imposter Penguin
Tim Keegan (South Africa) My Life with the Duvals Umuzi
Sindiwe Magona (South Africa) Beauty's Gift Kwela books
Mandla Langa (South Africa) The Lost Colours of the Chameleon Picador Africa
Zoe Wicomb (South Africa) The One That Got Away Umuzi

Best First Book
Jassy Mackenzie (South Africa) Random Violence Umuzi
Uwem Akpan (Nigeria) Say You're One of Them Abacus
Megan Voysey-Braig (South Africa) Till We Can Keep An Animal Jacana Media
Chris Mamewick (South Africa) Shepherds and Butchers Umuzi
Sue Rabie (South Africa) Boston Snowplough Human & Rousseau
Jane Bennett (South Africa ) Porcupine Kwela Books

Canada and Caribbean

<Best Book
Marina Endicott (Canada) Good to a Fault Freehand Books
Kenneth J Harvey (Canada) Blackstrap Hawco Random House Canada
Nino Ricci (Canada) The Origin of Species Doubleday Canada
Jacob Ross(Grenada) Pynter Bender Fourth Estate
Jaspreet Singh (Canada) Chef Véhicule Press
Fred Stenson (Canada) The Great Karoo Doubleday Canada

Best First Book
Theanna Bischoff (Canada) Cleavage NeWest Press
Mark Blagrave (Canada) Silver Salts Cormorant Books
Craig Boyko (Canada) Blackouts McClelland and Stewart
Nila Gupta (Canada) The Sherpa and Other Fictions Sumach Press
Pasha Malla (Canada) The Withdrawal Method House of Anansi Press
Joan Thomas (Canada) Reading By Lightning Goose Lane Editions
Padma Viswanathan (Canada)The Toss of a Lemon Random House Canada

Europe and South Asia

Best Book
Chris Cleave (United Kingdom) The Other Hand Sceptre
Shashi Deshpande (India) The Country of Deceit Penguin
Philip Hensher (United Kingdom) The Northern Clemency Fourth Estate
Jhumpa Lahiri (United Kingdom) Unaccustomed Earth Bloomsbury Publishing
David Lodge (United Kingdom) Deaf Sentence Harvill Secker
Salman Rushdie (United Kingdom) The Enchantress of Florence Random House


Best First Book
Sulaiman Addonia (United Kingdom) The Consequences of Love Chatto and Windus
Daniel Clay (United Kingdom) Broken HarperPress
Joe Dunthorne (United Kingdom) Submarine Hamish Hamilton/Penguin
Mohammed Hanif (Pakistan) The Case of Exploding Mangoes Jonathan Cape
Murzaban Shroff (India) Breathless in Bombay St. Martin's Griffin
Rowan Somerville (United Kingdom) The End of Sleep Weidenfield and Nicholson

South East Asia and the Pacific

Best Book
Aravind Adiga (Australia) Between The Assassinations Atlantic Books
Helen Garner (Australia) The Spare Room The Text Publishing Company
Joan London (Australia) The Good Parents Random House Australia (Vintage Imprint)
Paula Morris (New Zealand) Forbidden Cities Penguin New Zealand
Christos Tsiolkas (Australia) The Slap Allen and Unwin
Tim Winton, (Australia) Breath Picador

Best First Book
Aravind Adiga (Australia), The White Tiger Atlantic Books
Nam Le (Australia) The Boat Hamish Hamilton
Mo Zhi Hong (New Zealand) The Year of The Shanghai Shark Penguin New Zealand
Bridget van der Zijpp (New Zealand) Misconduct Victoria University Press
Preeta Samarasan (Malaysian) Evening is the Whole Day Fourth Estate
Ashley Sievwright (Australia) The Shallow End Clouds of Magellan

Gunter Grass's diary

Fiction-writers may be great at depicting realities, but not as good when it comes to analysing politics and making their predictions. Gunter Grass is perhaps no exception to it. Monika Maron gives her impressions on reading Grass's just published 1990 diary.

I'm not saying that to err is shameful. Indeed Grass's diary could be seen as a testament to the fears of a man who has learned from history, and who saw Germany's state unity as a disaster waiting in the wings and which, luckily for him and the rest of us, never did. For Günter Grass, though, it is proof of his prophetic powers, or more modestly perhaps, of his political vision, or it quite simply shows that he was right, yet again.

But in actual fact, he is doing precisely what he accuses others of doing: he is colonising, if only mentally. He decides whose opinions are valid, he knows what's right for those gullible, backwards, Deutsch-Mark crazed East Germans, what they should want and idiotically don't want, and he steps up to intercede in their best interests, as if they were too stupid to articulate them themselves. He decides what succeeded and what failed. And German reunification was a failure for Grass, today and 18 years ago when, on 13 January 1991, finally reunited with his beloved Portuguese cacti he writes. Should, if have time and energy, take stock again next October 3rd in my usual 'dogmatic' way.

Satanic Verses: New insight?

Twenty years have passed since Ayatollah Khomeini declared fatwa on Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Fatwa is still on, officially at least, but Khomeini is dead and our Rushdie keeps hale, hearty and unharmed. But the controversial novel seems to be under re-evaluation.

Though The Satanic Verses is essentially a novel about "migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay" and castigates Western materialism in a comic tone, it got involved in a blasphemy controversy for wrong reasons.

Now a writer In Tehelka says that the book remains keen specifically for that which it is supposed to negate — it is a supremely sensitive examination of our need for religious feeling.

Daniel Klein: a real real writer

Berkshire Record Online publishes an interesting profile of Daniel Klein, who started his writing career as a ghost-writer, and went on to get his first book published after being rejected by as many as forty pubishers.

Klein's new novel “The History of Now" has received highly favorable prepublication reviews, and has been compared to the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Empire Falls” by Richard Russo, also set in a small New England community. The American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, has designated it a “notable” new book.

I like small towns, where life is comprehensible. I’ve lived in Great Barrington for 30 years, and I’ve liked hearing the stories about people I meet every day on the street when I go from the office to the post office. These are the incremental tales of real people in real life.

Why Murakami accepted Jerusalem Prize

Ghaza is no problem for the Japanese novelist

"I asked myself -- is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side.

"I gave is it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told.

"Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with heir own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing.

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Daniyal Mueenuddin: new comet of English writing?

Oulook news magazine publishes an article on Daniyal Mueenuddin

For the first time possibly in the subcontinent, we have a writer who is not only a first-rate craftsman of words, but is equally comfortable writing about a fading feudal aristocracy as about a class of characters that has been largely absent in English language fiction in the subcontinent: cooks, servants, electricians, hangers-on and thieves.

In the same issue, Sunil Sethi reviews Daniel Mueenuddin's book In Other Rooms, Other Words

Mueenuddin’s stories are contemporary, their observation of the rhythms of rural life in Pakistan made acute by the glinting knife underneath. The outbreaks of disaster are presaged by illicit relationships across boundaries of class, community and the age gap. (In many of the stories, lonely married men set up with indigent younger women till the mirror cracks.)

Aamer Hussein Interview

London-based Pakistani writer Aamer Hussein is interviewed at Tehelka.

Good books find their readers eventually. Qurratulain Hyder's splendid postmodern saga, Fireflies in the Mist, was virtually unnoticed when it first came out in her own English version in the mid- 1990s, but it’s been reprinted to some acclaim now that she is being given her due in anglophone circles as a major writer rather than merely a major Urdu writer.

Is active politics right for a literary writer?

News: Former United Nations diplomat and writer Shashi Tharoor is set to enter politics. He’s already been approached by the Congress to contest upcoming LokSabha elections.

The question is: why is Shashi joining politics? When does a writer join politics? Is it right for a writer to do a plotician's nasty job?

Or, was writing just a passtime, never a vocation, for Shashi Tharoor? Mind you he was a diplomat for the best part of his life and even contested for UN's general secretary's post. His diplomatic career is now over, and he's kind of unemployed right now.

We've heard of activist writers like Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy and Hasan Azizul Huq. Shashi's is not definitely a case of activism, but plain careerism. Some say he built up his writer's reputation, not so much by his merit or passion or talent as by using his position. May be he now hits the end of his road, and what other option than to join politics in this Indian soil!

The other Saadat Hasan Manto

A NEW PORTFOLIO ON A REAL WRITER
It's interesting to note that the new issue of A Public Space includes a portfolio on Saadat Hasan Manto, the great Urdu writer who lived in Bombay in the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps best known for his Partition stories. But Matt Reeck has put together a portfolio that looks at his other great subject: Bombay

It was a blow to have to leave Bombay, where I had lived such a busy life.
Bombay had taken me in, a wandering outcast thrown out by even his family. She had told me, “You can live happily here on two paise a day or on ten thousand rupees. Or if you want, you can be the saddest person in the world at either price. Here you can do whatever you want, and no one will think you’re strange. Here no one will tell you what to do. You will have to do
every difficult thing on your own, and you will have to make every important
decision by yourself. I don’t care if you live on the sidewalk or in a
magnificent mansion, I don’t care if you stay or go. I’ll always be here.” I
was disconsolate after leaving Bombay. My good friends were there. I had
gotten married there. My first child was born there, as was my second. There
I had gone from earning a couple rupees a day to thousands - hundreds of
thousands - and there I had spent it all. I loved it, and I still do!

Tarun Tejpal : a literary animal

Tarun Tejpal inhabits two worlds: journalism and literature. In the world of investigative journalism, his status is that of a high-profile rock star. In literature too, he's making waves.

I came to journalism because there was no vocation at that time called ‘full time writing’ really possible on the subcontinent.” Describing himself as a “literary animal”, he explains that the tide has turned now. “There been so much success and involvement in journalism that this has become my life. Today, I see no dissonance in that... I straddle two worlds: that of the kind of journalism I wish to do and that of the fiction which I love to write.”

It's good time to be a Pakistani writer

I've read bits of Kamila Shamsie and like her writing. I'm interested in works of Mohammed Hanif and Nadeem Aslam. I've read Moni Mohsin's interesting columns in an Indian daily. I've recently read an interview with Daniyal Mueenuddin, and though unimpresed, I would like to read one or two of his stories.

But Pakistani writing in English is hot to Indian publishers right now. "It’s grittier, blacker, more sardonic and more engaged than much of contemporary Indian writing in English", saya an editor-in-chief of a publishing house. She must know.

Kolkata Book Fair ( Jan 27 to Feb 9 )

Kolkata Book Fair, Asia's largest book fair, and the most attended book fair in the world - about 2 million visitors- has shifted its venue to Milan Mela ground this year. The venue - way too distant from the centre of the city - is conspicuous by its lack of structure. It does not have any transformer for proper arrangements of elctricity or any water supply system, let alone any adequate fire-fighting measures.

I've been so put off by the venue and its lack of structure that I've decided not to visit it this year. Oh, I remember I didn't visit last year's book fair even. Actually, I have never been a book fair regular.

But I've some happy memories when the book fair was held in ever-green Maidan. One of my favourite haunts was the Bangladesh section of the fair. I visited the Bangladesh Publishers' stalls with sharp eye on new titles by authors across the border. On one occasion, I remember I bought complete works of Syed Waliullah. On another occasion, I was frantically looking for a new title by Hasan Azizul Huq, but most stalls were selling crappy bestsellers by Bangladeshi authors. At long last I got the book in a small stall.

Yet another lingering memory is that of Subimal Misra, the anti-establshment fictioneer, selling his books under a big and colourful umbrella with placrds requesting audiences to read anti-establishment writers and writing.

Last time I visted the book fair at Maidan, I bought a translated copy of Don Quixote, and a novel by Henry James. But both were awful, the first one for bad rendering, and I never got around to reading those two books.

New Yorker's homage to John Updike

He was American literature’s great noticer, and his work was always a reminder of the texture, the detail of life: of flesh, of the drape of clothes, of a way of speaking, a quality of light. Two works, neglected by the obituarists, stay in my mind: a lovely essay on the experiences of being barefoot on Martha’s Vineyard, and the utterly persuasive Africa of his novel “The Coup.” He helped us see. I regard him as a master, appreciative in ways that enlarged his vision and made his writing sing.
Paul Theroux

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10 forbidden classics

Just in time for Valentine's Day, HarperPerennial is releasing new editions of ten “erotic tales” under the flag Forbidden Classics. Have you read any of these titles?

1.Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleaure by John Cleland

2.Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue by D.A.F. Marquis de Sade

3.Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Maso

4.The Way of a Man with a Maid by Anonymous

5.The Autobiography of a Flea by Stanislas de Rhod

6.Sadopaideia by Anonymous

7.The Pearl: Two Erotic Tales by Anonymous

8.My Secret Life by Walte

9.Venus in India by Charles Deverea

10.Emmanuelle by Emmanuelle Arsan, translated by Lowell Bair

Short short-story

Lying down beside his 14-year old son, he dreamt he was being greeted, amid a houseful of curious men, women and children, by a young, nattily dressed lady, her face encased by shampooed wavy hair, with a twinkle in her eye.

Title: DREAM
Word count:40

What do you think of it?

Future of novels and novelists

Just read this Time article. It makes some cool observations, with which I agree in full. But it leaves me wondering how the future novelists will have any income from their books.

Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever.

Hasan Azizul Huq's debut novel review

Aagunpakhi invokes Partition trauma and memories 

 So I bought and read Aagunpakhi at last. It has been exactly three days since I finished it. I’m still under its spell, though in a much diminished form at this moment. It’s a great Bengali novel written by arguably the best living short-story writer of Bangladesh, Hasan Azizul Huq. 

 Aagunpakhi is about a woman’s lone struggle and determination to stick to her homeland in the wake of Indo-Pakistan partition even when other members of her family, her husband included, left for Pakistan for security and new home. She never could bring herself to believe that she was no more wanted in the land where she was born, raised up, married, gave birth to her sons and daughters and lived through her childhood, youth, prosperity of her groom, famine, world warII and Hindu-Muslim riots upto the partition of the big land that was India. Her poignant  query as to why this land - moral wasteland actually - was no longer hers simply because of her being a Muslim dumbed and overwhelmed me as a reader. I could not check back my tears at her predicament. 

 But while reading the novel, I was wondering – I like to deconstruct novels, especially the debut ones - why Hasan was writing about the partition after such a long time. Partition, as a theme, is no doubt a bit stale these days. The last chapter provided the clue to my question, and the protagonist suddenly seemed familiar to me. As a Hasan aficionado, I have been tracking him since I loved to admire his work. 

Hasan was born and raised in a Burdwan village in West Bengal. After his school, he went on to East Pakistan to live with his elder sister and her husband. I noticed such a character in this novel. I presume Hasan draws heavily - as any real writer should and does – from his childhood experience to write this novel. And the protagonist is actually his mother. Hasan gives an intimate portrait of this lady – simple, naïve, humanitarian - against a Bengal countryside complete with social and demographic details in his original, realistic and pared-down prose. Her transformation in the end to a rebel of sort, though a bit abrupt, touches our chords.

 P.S. Some translator should step in immediately to grab this novel for translation.

Farewell to John Updike

John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit novels highlighted a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism so vast, protean and lyrical as to place him in the first rank of American authors, died on Tuesday in Danvers, Mass. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Farms, Mass.

Is Yu Hua a real writer?

Just finished Pankaj Mishra's The Bonfire of China's Vanities in the NewYork Times Magazine. A long sprawling piece, but readable, though you sometimes lose thread of the article. So, is Yu Hua, the writer of the largest-selling novel Brothers (due to be published in English soon)in China, a real writer? I've my doubts.

100 novels everyone should read

Of course, UK-centric. And far from being comprehensive. But most are real writing by real writers. I've read about 50 novels out of this list. But I miss some:
God of Small things by Arundhati Roy, and A fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry immediately come to mind. I'm glad Boris Pasternak's Dr.Zivago is there.

Guardian 1000 Novels To Read Before You Die Meme

Of course, it's a very long list. Anyway, have a look.

Jaipur Literature Festival(21st to 25th January 2009)

Jaipur is a long way from where I live, and I'm no fan of such literary festivals. Honestly, I'm pissed off by William Dalrymple (Is he a real writer?) and his ilk. As I understand, it's a no-holds-barred jamboree with plenty of music, dance, dinner, drinks, you name anything, with a few literature-related events sloted in between. A perfect melting pot for our fake and fashionable writers!

In the list you find names like Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, Vikas Swarup, even Chetan Bhagat. Do you miss any real writer? Yes, Arundhati Roy being one of them. The list gives you an idea of what bullshit they are going to talk about or discuss in the name of literature and in what fashion.

Who's sponsoring this extravaganza in this time of global economic meltdown?

But the festival finds favour with India's English media.

Lit News: The novel that landed its writer in a jail

Harry Nicolaides, an Australian writer, was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Thailand's royal family in his novel, a rare conviction of a foreigner amid a crackdown on people and Web sites deemed critical of the monarchy

Mr. Nicolaides, a 41-year-old from Melbourne, was charged with insulting Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej and the crown prince in his 2005 book “Verisimilitude,” a piece of fiction that only sold seven copies.

Tejpal's second novel launch

Tarun J. Tejpal comes up with his second novel called The Story of My Assassins (HarperCollins). His first novel The Alchemy of Desire, published three years ago, also by the same publisher, was a big success, and sold more than 3 lakh copies woldwide so far. He is perhaps the most widely read modern Indian writer in English.

Tejpal is primarily a journalist and edits the famous weekly newsmagazine Tehelka. But he has a literary side, and though he devotes "almost 99 per cent" of his time to running Tehelka weekly, he managed to "put together this 500- page novel about the real India, real people and its million turmoils, by shutting his mind out in the few minutes he managed to steal from his hectic schedule."

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Current climate for new writers

Q:What do you make of the current climate for new writers?

A:I do not envy them. It's a hostile environment. The old way of just writing a book, signing an agent, finding a publisher to nurture you is long, long gone. But also, how exciting to be working right now, when things are changing. You have to be fluid and quick on your feet and inventive, but that stuff is all fun.

Jessa Crispin, hugely experienced and savvy blogger of Bookslut, is interviewed here.

An exiled writer's last hopes

Taslima Nasreen on Bangladesh's new government

I am pinning my last hopes of a secular government on the Awami League. Will it act like the forces that banned my Amar Meyebela (My Childhood) and prevented me from returning home to meet my ailing mother and father? Will it all change? Will they allow me to return home? I doubt that.

Full article here..

Tao Lin: a real writer?

I've been reading Tao Lin for quite a while: his stories, his blog, poems, just anything by him that comes my way. Not that I like his writing. In fact, I doubt he's a real writer. But it's fun to watch out on all of his activities. May be he's a genius.

The name of his first novel was Eeeee Eee Eeee. I don't know how he got it published. He sells his own manuscripts, doodles, page proofs, notebooks—on eBay, and last summer he generated international attention by selling, six “shares” of an unfinished novel for $2,000 each. He recently launched a tiny press that publishes, among other things, Gmail chats. He is very good at gimmickry.

Tao Lin has some fans, Jessa Crispin, the well-known book blogger, being the most illustrious among them.

Read Tao Lin, Lit Boy.

Six owls and a writing geek

Has an owl, or a bunch of owls, anything to do with a writing geek?

The thing is, they have recently landed my neighbourhood - a cluster of apartment buildings, without any trees or greenery in it. They're now staying in here, silent all day, but as the dark falls, they start hooting, and contnue it all through the night until the daybreak.

A few days ago, when I was leaving for my clinic in the evening, I saw some boys chasing a timid-looking ugly creature through entrance of my apartment. I didn't know it was an owl. It was cowering in a dark corner, and looked heplessly around as if it did not know how to fly. But it flied at last and sat itself on a cornice of our adjacent apartment building. It began to hoot soon after.

Its shrill voice is really disturbing particularly at bedime. Its hoot keeps piercing your eardrum on and on, and you hear it when you go to sleep, during your sleep, and even after sleep if it's not yet daybreak. Oh, what a nuisance! You can compare it only with a fake writer's work which you some times have to read in absence of a book by a real writer.

Then one of the owls died, probably from elctrocution from a near-by transformer. A crowd gathered around its body in front of my apartment building. There I heard some wag tell that as many as six owls were visiting the neighbourhood at the moment, and they were parched at different positions waiting to hoot as the night sets in.

The hooting however continued as ever, and there was no respite from it. My wife, a bit insomniac by disposition, cursed them regularly, but suggested at the same time that the people here contact the forest department so that these creatures could go back to where they belonged.

Another owl died yesterday.

My driver said that yet another owl had died one day back. So, with this death, only three owls remain.

Last night I heard the hoot, but it was a bit subdued as if someone was mourning. May be two owls - one male, another female - were hooting together so long, and one of them had died yesterday.

It seems like we would get rid of the owls soon(they are anyway doomed to die in this urban no-tree environs), but what bugs me is why and how they made their way down here.

Why you should listen to fiction writers

"However, writers such as Grossman in Israel or Arundhati Roy in India, who live amid some of the world's bloodiest conflicts, choose not to be somewhere else when triggers are being cocked and pulled. Their views demand respectful attention even when they provoke sharp disagreement. For they have consistently witnessed, and often spoken out, at considerable personal risk, against the ominous transformations within their countries: the emergence of powerful revanchist movements (Hindu nationalism, settler Zionism) the suppression of religious minorities and occupied territories with brute force (Gujarat, Kashmir, West Bank and Gaza); the diffusion of a shrill media culture on the American model, a contagion of ignorant TV anchors and "experts" who together with a reactionary political elite manufacture a consensus about how to deal with internal and external enemies (usually, with force and then much more force)."

Guess who's writing it? Pankaj Mishra, the brilliant literary critic and essayist, who's now writing, alas, for the international media only. Where does he live now?

Full article here.

A writer as 'thinking men's sex symbol"!

News: Indian origin author Jhumpa Lahiri, with her "hypnotic eyes", has been named among the top 10 "sex symobls of the thinking man" for 2008, which put Serbian tennis player Ana Ivanovic in the number one slot.

Now, do such news bothers you? I know the media today thrives on such news - and some people think our world now needs this kind of news. But I wonder where it would all end up.

Bangladeshi writer Taslima gets a home in Paris

"I am a wanderer in search of a nest in this vast world. I am a helpless woman, who, for over a decade now, is in search of a home of her own, in a city where she wants to live. I am Taslima Nasreen of Mymensingh, Bangladesh."
How sad, though reasuring, that Taslima gets a home - a rent-free apartment - at last, in Paris - far, far away from Dacca or Kolkata where she mentally belongs!

My New Year non-resolutions

You'll notice that I didn't do any list like "My best books in 2008". Not that I didn't think about it, but I found my memory blocked. Did not I read any important book last year? Yes, of course - Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown,and Donigan Merritt's
Possessed by Shadows, for example, but not many. I had read some stories by Clezio and Bolano desultorily, mainly from the web. In retrospect, I bought far fewer books last year.

Now I reckon that the web has changed my reading habits without my knowing it. In stead of lengthy works, I now find myself reading shorter pieces mostly on the web. There's little time for buying books from the bookstore. And library is something I've lost contact with since a long time ago. Another thing, I've read much more about writers than their works. This is bad enough.

As ever I'm obsessed with real writers. In my scheme of things, I have no space for fake or fashionable writers. So why did I post pieces on Chetan Bhagat or Sobhaa De? Actually, I had read them to see for myself what crap they are dishing out to capture the attention of today's readers. Admittedly, they have some popularity among a section of scatterbrains and shallow raders(One of Bhagat's fans recently sent me an e-mail querying about Bhagat's best 'nobel'). Don't get surprised if you see me posting occasional pieces on them. The fact is, I hate the fashionable writers, and always have an issue with them. Why? Because they are cornering the real writers, taking advantage of our shallow and superficial times. They are invading the space of what real writers should have.

One of my objectives, as a writing geek, is to introduce my readers to real writers and real writing so that they can have a taste of literature. Literature is not passe, as many people think, and needs to be cultivated more in these times for preserving our sanity. A piece of real writing says much more - in terms of substance and value -than any of your audio-visual work today. As Le Clezio said in his Nobel lecture,"Literature—and this is what I have been driving at—is not some archaic relic that ought, logically, to be replaced by the audiovisual arts, the cinema in particular. Literature is a complex, difficult path, but I hold it to be even more vital today than in the time of Byron or Victor Hugo.”

This year I want to do some serious reading. Roberto Balano tops my TBR list. Another writer I'm yearning for these days is Hassan Azizul Haque. Hassan is a real Bengali writer based in Bangladesh, and short stories are his main forte. He has a novel published recently, and it has created a buzz. Hassan took a decade's time to pen this novel. I'm going to buy and read this novel soon.

Tehelka's "original fictions"

Has a newsmagazine got anything to do with literature? Not really. Things it churns out every week are mainly politics, not literature. But this is Tehelka, India's most controversial and real newsmag, which has a track record of fighting fiercely with the Establishment, and suffering in the process interminably at the hands of the power-that-be, but still elects to fight doggedly for people's cause. Interestingly, it has devoted its year-end double issue to "original fictions" by 15 writers.

Why?

"..every journalist and politician -people who shape the public domain - should read at least one literary novel every year," writes Tehelka's esteemed editor Tarun J Tejpal. "Just so they can step out of the halogen of self-aggrandisement, look at life bottom-up rather than top-down, enter other lives through backdoor rather than the front, and connect with their own inner lives rather than the image on the screen."

Have you ever read any such comments from any newsmag editor? Who, among our newspaper editors, has such refined tastes and insights?

My sincerest thanks to Tarun for adding this new dimension to his weekly.

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Harold Pinter

What a shame that Harold Pinter's death news did not appear on the first page of the morning paper I read; it was tucked down in a single paragraph in the bottom of seventh page!(I'm changing my paper every year, and may perhaps end up without having one. Newspapers are really a shit these days).

Harold Pinter was such a rare personality: real writer, courageous, outspoken without fear of consequences, politically incorrect, with a genuine compassion and concern for the mankind.

Of his all works, I loved his
Nobel Lecture hugely.

Ten best short story collections, 2008

BookFox offers ten books for
Best Short Story Collections of 2008. Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth is the only book in the list that I've read partially, but frankly didn't like her banal family theme. But I'm a bit amazed that short story collections are still published - in US, specially-, and there must be some readers like our BookFox who love them.

Why Arundhati Roy is a threat for Indian males

Arundhati Roy is derided by the Indian male as she refuses to be slotted into the “liberated” position that Aishwarya Rai is in. Unlike other Indian women, Arundhati will not be bullied or subjugated into accepting a controlled choice. To us she is closer to the Kali persona than the feminine cult of Sita and Lakshmi, which Indian society so much venerates. Like Kali she is the rebel, the outcast - the slayer of all masculine power. All hail Kali.

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Bolano story review

Story: Meeting with Enrique Lihn

The story has a single-paragraph text which could have been divided in many, many paragraphs. But why would Bolano do it? He's not your MFA-trained writer that he would be bothered about the look of the text; he must write his own way. Yet it's a wonderfully smooth read: compact, gripping, moving, insightful, evocative and full of experiences, histories and images like you find in big classics. I expected, though, some anarchic element in it.

Look at its opening line:
In 1999, after returning from Venezuela, I dreamed that I was being taken to Enrique Lihn’s apartment, in a country that could well have been Chile, in a city that could well have been Santiago, bearing in mind that Chile and Santiago once resembled Hell, a resemblance that, in some subterranean layer of the real city and the imaginary city, will forever remain.

Everything happens in the writer's dream. The vivid but unnostalgic narrative of his poet-friend Enrique Lihn - as if a non-movie rewind of a colourful life lived in real time and space - unfolds in a very apt and surreal milieu.

I get a feel that Bolano encapsulates a novel's material in the short space of a story. His effortless blend of the real and imaginary, fact and fiction, present and past is simply amazing.

And what a great end:
And we looked and looked, and the façades were clearly the façades of another time, like the sidewalks covered with parked cars that also belonged to another time, a time that was silent yet mobile (Lihn was watching it move), a terrible time that endured for no reason other than sheer inertia.

Read the story here.

"New good sex" by famous writers!

It's of course a crazy idea that the world, now deep in recession woes, needs new good sex for its survival. But it's exactly what the new e-book service Ravenous Romance thinks.

What is more, this e-venture is being backed by,among others, John Updike, the well-known American writer and literary icon, who has entertained readers with his varied depiction of sex for quite a while.

How do you feel about this venture? Is it selling soft porno in new garb? Does it point to bankruptcy in ideas? or, do you like it?

Arab Booker shortlist

Six Arab authors were short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2009 (IPAF) in London.The prize was launched in Abu Dhabi in April last year in association with the Booker Prize Foundation and with the support of the Emirates Foundation. Gulfnews link

short-listed authors:

1.Mohammad El-Bisatie

2.Fawwaz Haddad

3.Ina'am Kachachi

4.Ebrahim Nasrallah

5.Al Habib Al Salmi

6.Yousuf Zaydan

I've read Mohammad El-Bisatie's novel Hunger partially. A wonderfully gripping novel about a theme most writers would avoid these days. Real writing.
An excerpt from the novel .

Bolano, Bolano!!

"2666 is an epic of whispers and details, full of buried structures and intuitions that seem too evanescent, or too terrible, to put into words. It demands from the reader a kind of abject submission—to its willful strangeness, its insistent grimness, even its occasional tedium—that only the greatest books dare to ask for or deserve."
Slouching Towards Santa Teresa: Roberto Bolaño's utterly strange masterpiece.

“He didn't set out to do this just to prove something, to experiment, or to make some nihilistic statement. As he said many times, writing was for him a radical way of living, and thus he had to find a vital and arresting and, in some ways, anti-literary approach to fiction.”
A Great Conversation on 2666

Nobel Lecture,2008

"If there is one virtue which the writer's pen must always have, it is that it must never be used to praise the powerful, even with the faintest of scribblings."

Read Le Clezio Nobel lecture
here.

Toni Morrison: alchemy of fact and feeling

Even for Morrison — a Nobel laureate and one of America’s most celebrated living authors — making black stories bearable is a daunting task. Several years ago, she described to me the challenges of crafting Beloved, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a woman named Sethe who murders her young daughter to keep her from being returned to slavery. The baby reappears years later to Sethe as a grown-up ghost with an insatiable appetite for love.

Kafka's office writings

Princeton University Press has just published a selection of Kafka's Office Writings in English. Three scholars -two professional Kafkans, Stanley Corngold, and Benno Wagner, and a law professor and a civil rights attorney, Jack Greenberg, have appended their commentaries, charts, prefaces and postface to these writings.

Despite Kafka, it's excruciatingly boring to read his office writings. So you have to read them as companions to demystify his novels and stories. There is an obvious connection between his office writings and his fiction.

more..

"Kill till the last breath": Mumbai terror strike

New terrorism stuff for real writers
Azmal Amir Kasab (not his real name, I suppose) is 21, handsome, educated, fluent in at least three languages, techno-savvy, and a master killer. He is the sole member of the Mumbai terror strike team, who remains alive as if as a historical necessity, as a clue to the ghastly plot, as a trail to whoever and which way the operation was masterminded.

Amir reminds me of Salman Rushdie's terrorist-protagonist in his brilliant novel Shalimar, the clown. But he was an illiterate Kashmiri guy, and the premise of his turning a terrorist was that her beautiful wife was eloped and subsequently abused by the American Ambassador whom he would blast to death in an operation.

We don't know anything about Amir's premise. But given his profile, it seems he took to terrorism by choice. Gone are the days when the terrorist outfit could employ only illiterate, poor and strong youths from the backyards of a country. Terrorism is a hot new industry now, and have many lures for the educated young folks. Remember Pheerboy who was arrested by intelligence agency sometime back? He was a top-notch executive of Yahoo.

During his training Amir must have fed on enough of radical Islam theology and rhetoric. ”Kill till the last breath!” is just one of those dictums. No wonder he killed at random as many people – innocents, police and army personnel, and foreigners – in as many ways as possible. He's a gigantic killing machine, and in his perception, men are just objects - no living things.

The intersting thing is, he did not even try to kill himself when he fell in the hands of Indian security personnel despite potassium cyanide with him. Which testifies that his survival instinct was intact in him and got the better of his master's tutorial.

Now, his interrogations have begun. Expectedly, after his intial reluctunace, he would reveal most important things though with a lot of cooked-up and fabricated details. His masters, successfully, turned him a crazy and hardened criminal, but he still values his life.

Like any other ideology, radical Islam is also a construct, and however powerful the ideologue’s rhetoric, most of its followers are wrong-headed and cowards. All it can foster is rabid fanaticism and senseless killings.

Terrorism has now come to such a state that it's no longer easy to tackle it. George W. Bush who is the most vocal champion of "war on terror" actually stoked terrorism by attacking Iraq on a false and motivated pretext, and ravaging the country physically and intellectually. Is it hard to imagine that this is one reason why the terrorists in Mumbai strike sought the Americans and British citzens first in Taj and other hotels?

Now, do you think our netas (politicians) will do anything to curb terrorism? Not really. While many of them are accomplices, complicits or benificaries of this terrorism thing, all of them love this crisis, and cash on it to get their political mileage. The latest example is that of Narendra Modi, the hated genocider, who rushed to Mumbai to announce his donation package to terror victims. He was brilliantly rebuffed though.

As of now, you're left with no clue whatsoever to face terrorism. But you can certainly hope that terrorism will one day get jaded and stop after running its course. Meanwhile, get ready to see more gore and bloodbath.

Roberto Bolano makes it - posthumously!

How fascinating and sad that Roberto Bolano, a post-modern response to Gabriel Garcia Marquex, generates the buzz (and getting evaluated in the process) five years after his death! His recently released tome "2666", is flying off the bookshops at a time when book sales are flat and declining. It's the best book of 2008, according to some critics.

"It’s special. It’s weird. I don’t entirely understand the commercial side of it”, said Lorin Stein, editor of “2666” at FSG.“This is a difficult and very sad book, and adults rarely follow a literary author’s career the way they used to. It’s like an intellectual Harry Potter.”

James Kelman interview

The crucial factor is the ability to earn a living, this is what is taken from writers who work on/from the margins. Your question suggests it is a fair go, an even fight, or some such nonsense. It isn’t. One side has power and authority and the other doesn’t. One has the power to stop the other from earning a living. It is better to be acknowledged as a writer than have to continue proving it all the time.
More..

Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award

Iain Hollingshead wins Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Awards this year for a passage in his first novel Twentysomething (Duckworth).

The awards were set up by Auberon Waugh with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels. Previous winners include Tom Wolfe, AA Gill, Sebastian Faulks, and Melvyn Bragg.

Josef Winkler interview

In writing I discovered where I came from. Only in writing did I discover what had happened. Had I not started writing, my life would have remained a matter of three lines. Now it is thousands of pages.

Who's Josef Winkler?

Australian novelist Josef Winkler was born to a farming family on March, 3, 1953 in Kärnten and has worked as a novelist since 1982. He lives in Klagenfurt where he teaches at the university. He has been recently awarded the Georg Buchner prize - Germany's top literary award.

Winkler has already been honoured with the Berlin Literature Prize, the Alfred Döblin prize and the André-Gide prize.

He has written thirteen books about death.

Taslima shunted out, again!

Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen has again been "forced" to leave India after her brief stay here, prompting the controversial writer to question the country's alleged secular credentials.

Nadine Gordimer visits India

Who's a real writer?
Dr. Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Laureate from South Africa, is now visiting India. She read excerpts from her books in Mumbai (09 Nov 08), delivered the Second Nobel Laureate Lecture in Kolkata on 10 Nov 08. She would be attending a book reading session followed by Q&A session at 1700 hrs on 13 Nov 08 in New Delhi.

In Kolkata, she spoke for about thirty minutes. She said that the literature of the new age was to reveal the secrets of hearts, not sequence of events. A writer was a political being, he could not be insensitive to what went on in the world, she said.

She added that a real writer's job was not only that of witnessing, he must go deeper to understand the significance and meaning of what was happening around him.

She had this quote from Albert Camus: "The moment when I'm no more than a writer, I will cease to be a writer."

When asked about her views on globalization, she quipped, "It's nothing more than trade pacts."

25 Best Fiction Titles, 2008

A PW list
Don't get disappointed if you don't see your favourite title here. The list covers only the American publishing in 2008. Of course, these titles were reviewed by PW. For sure, there are still some titles outside of this list, probably from small or independent presses that can match or beat the selection. Do you know of any such title?

When Will There Be Good News?Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown)
Unrelated characters and plot lines collide with momentous results in Atkinson's third novel to feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie.
2666
Roberto Bolaño, trans. from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Bolaño's sprawling masterpiece revolves around a passel of academics, a reclusive German writer and a fictionalized Juarez, Mexico. Pure brilliance.
Hold Tight
Harlan Coben (Dutton)
Edgar-winner Coben's unnerving thriller follows a sadistic suburban killer in a New Jersey community with his usual mastery.
The Brass Verdict
Michael Connelly
(Little, Brown)
This beautifully executed crime thriller brings together two popular Connelly characters, LAPD Det. Harry Bosch and L.A. lawyer Mickey Haller.
Master of the Delta
Thomas H. Cook (Harcourt)
Edgar-winner Cook examines the slow collapse of a prominent Southern family in this magnificent tale of suspense set in 1954.
The Konkans
Tony D'Souza (Harcourt)
This story of an Indian-American family's immigrant experience in Chicago is loaded with humor and pathos. Young in writer-years, D'Souza writes with a seasoned hand.
The Plague of Doves
Louise Erdrich (Harper)
Erdrich's 13th novel, a multigenerational tour de force of sin, redemption, murder and vengeance, finds its roots in the 1911 slaughter of a farming family near Pluto, N. Dak.
The Likeness
Tana French (Viking)
Fans of psychological suspense will embrace Irish author French, who blurs the boundaries between victim and cop, memory and fantasy, in this stunning sequel to her debut, In the Woods.
Sea of Poppies
Amitav Ghosh (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Diaspora, myth and a fascinating language mash-up propel the Rubik's cube of plots in Ghosh's picaresque epic. The cast is marvelous and the plot majestically serpentine, but the real hero is the English language, which has rarely felt so alive and vibrant.
Ritual
Mo Hayder (Atlantic Monthly)
Readers looking for visceral thrills need look no further than this British crime novel involving African witchcraft.
The Lazarus Project
Aleksandar Hemon (Riverhead)
Dueling story lines about Central European immigrants dovetail into a masterful account of the immigrant experience and the quest for identity in MacArthur genius Hemon's second novel, an NBA finalist.
Day
A.L. Kennedy (Knopf)
Kennedy's highly stylized and immeasurably sad sixth novel (after Paradise) follows former Royal Air Force tail gunner Alfred Day as he relives his experiences in a WWII German prison camp.
My Revolutions
Hari Kunzru (Dutton)
A reformed London radical's past returns to haunt him in Kunzru's divine novel.
Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)
The gulf that separates expatriate Bengali parents from their American-raised children—and that separates the children from India—remains Lahiri's subject for this faultless follow-up to The Namesake.
Sway
Zachary Lazar
(Little, Brown)
Lazar channels the Rolling Stones, Kenneth Anger and a Manson family associate in this piercing examination of the dread and exhilaration of the late 1960s.
The Boat
Nam Le (Knopf)
The stories in Le's stunning debut collection cover a vast geographic territory and are filled with exquisitely painful and raw moments of revelation, captured in an economical style as deft as it is sure.
The Given Day
Dennis Lehane (Morrow)
In a splendid flowering of the talent previously demonstrated in his crime fiction (Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River), Lehane combines 20th-century American history, a gripping story of a family torn by pride and the strictures of the Catholic Church, and the plot of a multifaceted thriller.
Flesh House
Stuart MacBride (St. Martin's Minotaur)
Scottish author MacBride's dry wit turns what could have been a gratuitously gory slasher story into a crackling thriller.
How the Dead Dream
Lydia Millet (Counterpoint)
Millet is as lyrical, haunting and deliciously absurd as ever in this Heart of Darkness–style journey into massive loss.
Netherland
Joseph O'Neill (Pantheon)
A Dutch-born equities analyst gets swept up by a fast-talking, crooked-dealing Bangladeshi cricket enthusiast in post-9/11 New York City in O'Neill's beautifully written and intelligent novel.
Knockemstiff
Donald Ray Pollock (Doubleday)
They don't come much grittier than this debut collection set in Knockemstiff, Ohio, a grimy pocket of derelicts, perverts and criminals.
Lush Life
Richard Price (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Price trains his sharp eye and flawless ear on Manhattan's Lower East Side in this manic crescendo of a novel that explores the repercussions of a seemingly random shooting.
Serena
Ron Rash (Ecco)
This implacably grim tale of greed and corruption gone wild—and of eventual, well-deserved revenge—follows the dealings of a Depression-era lumber baron and his callous new wife.
Breath
Tim Winton (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Two daredevil Australian teens get involved with a dangerous surfer (and his more dangerous wife) in this taut story of death, life, pleasure and thrill-seeking.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
David Wroblewski (Ecco)
A Wisconsin mute hides out in the woods with hyperintelligent dogs in Wroblewski's contemporary riff on Macbeth.

Jurassic Park author dies

Michael Crichton, doctor-turned-writer, dies of cancer at 66

"He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the Earth... Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place."
Steven Spielberg

If Kurt Vonnegut was alive today..

Welcome, Prez Obama!
If Kurt Vonnegut was alive, he would have been the happiest person today at this historic moment of the US. Vonnegut was extremely distressed and unhappy with George W Bush and his policies – to such an extent that he once called Bush as a twit.

In reality, Bush was worse than a twit: he was arrogant, aggressive, uncultured, semi-literate, malevolent, bully, liar, history-sheeter, psychopath, evil incarnate, war-monger, genocider, enemy of civilization…

Bush was perhaps the most despised figure after Hitler and Stalin in human history.

I can never figure out how the people of the US voted Bush to power twice. They had to pay a heavy price for their action. In his nincompoop way, Bush shoved the US (and a large swath of the world) to the brink. With McCaine and Palin, the world would have fallen to pieces, for sure.

I’m happy that the people of the US have at last had senses to boot away the Republican candidate in a spetacular fashion.

Of course, Barack Obama is a messiah who people look up to deliver the goodies, to save the country and the people from the raging apocalypse.

I have no idea of how Obama would pan out his strategy to deal with the deep financial crisis, and sort out the mess. It’s really a big challenge.

I'm not sure how he would tackle the big corporate houses who constitute a formidable power, and actually run the government.

I don’t know how he would take on the free market economy and other neo-liberal policies of the Bush regime.

Who would be his thinking tank? What reformist model would he follow?

Barack Obama emerges as a historical necessity, as an anti-thesis of all that went wrong with Bush. Hopefully, he will represent an US we want – a sanitized country with humane and cosmopolitan attitude and values.

Election "short-story"

Barack Obama or John McCain? You'll know it soon. Meanwhile, may I ask you to read a short-story "Foes" by Lorrie Moore, one of America's best short-story writers, who had this election as her theme? As ever, she combines humour with pathos and insight.

American writers rally behind Barack Obama

"Although a few old lions like Vidal and Vonnegut and Mailer had their (very valiant) say, generally artists were treated by the Bush administration like... Sub-jester treatment, I guess you could say. This was stupid and costly, because any novelist could have imagined the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath better than Bush et al did. "

George Saunders' Jon now on stage

Heard of George Saunders, the short-story madman, recently? He has been frequenting Chicago in the past few months to help develop the first stage adaptation of his work in his hometown.

Opening Thursday, October 30 running until December 14 Collaboraction Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Jon (originally published 2003 in the New Yorker).

"The basis for literature is the fact that all of our brains are essentially, structurally, identical. First love in 1830, in Russia, beneath swaying pines, is neurologically identical to first love in 1975, back of a Camaro, Foghat blaring. That’s why that wonderful cross-firing occurs when we read."

Mobylives, new version!

The future arrived yesterday
Mobylives is back with its great fare of news and views about real writers and real writing.

Die Box: Part 2 Of Gunter Grass autobiography

Real writing:"Best by Grass in a long time"

"It's autobiographical writing, but in the way I can do it - telling stories. The first one, Peeling the Onion, was about my youth when I was an unknown author, then it finished with the year 1959 when The Tin Drum came out. Now I start with the year 1960. I didn't like to write about my own writing, but I was interested in how my children - I have many children, eight children - how they saw their father with his typewriter, an old-fashioned typewriter. When they asked questions I would give an answer, but my head was still going on with what was in my head. From this point of view I've collected all my children, and they are speaking about that time in connection with me."
More..

Le Clezio story in New Yorker

The boy who had never seen the sea

"We thought lots of people would be very interested to see what his work was like," said New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
"We also wanted to move fast and publish it while people still remember his name.

Frankfurt Book fair: Big deals

The world's largest trade fair for books ended its annual expo in Frankfurt on Sunday, Oct. 19. It booked the largest number of visitors in its 60-year-history.

Big deals 2008
Debut novels

Writer News: Gommorrha writer faces direct life threat

Roberto Saviano, the Italian writer who has been living under state protection for the past two years after writing "Gommorrha", a best-selling book about the shady business practices of the Camorra, the organized crime group that operates in his home region around Naples, faces a direct threat to his life.

The Camorra’s threats against Mr. Saviano’s life are reportedly worse than the fatwa against Mr. Rushdie following the publication in 1988 of his novel, “The Satanic Verses.”

Rober Saviano was at the ongoing Frankfurt fair to receive an award for the Oscar-nominated movie that was based on his book, “Gomorrah.”

50 most "worth talking about" books.

A list of 50 books touted as the "most worth talking about" was announced on Friday ahead of World Book Day 2009.

The organisation behind World Book Day published the list to launch its new Spread the Word website www.spread-the-word.org.uk designed to encourage reading.

On the site readers are invited to vote for "the best book to talk about".

The winning book will be announced on World Book Day, Thursday 5 March 2009.

The panel that selected the 50 books consisted of major and independent booksellers and representatives of reading groups, as well as World Book Day organisers, the spokesman added.

The winning author will receive a £5,000 prize.

Now, check out how many books in the list you've read, whether they are real writing, or by real writers, or doubt the list being a subtle marketing ploy to promote some titles..

The list:

Imagine This, by Sade Adenirai, (SW Books)

Catch a Fish from the Sea (Using the Internet), by Nasreen Akhtar, (Greenbirds Publishing)

The Blood of Flowers, by Anita Amirrezvani, (Headline Review)

A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, (John Murray)

Joe The Only Boy in the World, by Michael Blastland, (Profile)

Away, by Amy Bloom, (Granta)

The Opposite of Love, by Julie Bluxbaum, (Bantam)

The Song Before It Is Sung, by Justin Cartwright, (Bloomsbury)

Broken, by Daniel Clay, (Harper Perennial)

Random Deaths and Custard, by Catrin Dafydd, (Gomer)

The Solitude of Emperors, by David Davidar, (Orion)

Maynard and Jennica, by Rudolph Denson, (Harper Perennial)

Fup, by Jim Dodge, (Canongate)

Zoology, by Ben Dolnick, (Harper Perennial)

The Vitamin Murders, by James Fergusson, (Portobello)

The Glassblower of Murano, by Marina Fiorato, (Burning House)

Ancestor House, by Aminatta Forna, (Bloomsbury)

Love Falls, by Esther Freud, (Bloomsbury)

Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen, (Harper Perennial)

Tao: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China, by Aya Goda, (Portobello)

Now You See Him, by Eli Gottlieb, (Serpent's Tail)

Wild, by Jay Griffiths, (Hamish Hamilton)

The Condition, by Jennifer Haigh, (Harper)

The Fantastic Book of Everyone's Secrets, by Sophie Hannah, (Sort of Books)

The Archivist's Story, by Travis Holland, (Bloomsbury)

The Mistress's Daughter, by A.M. Homes, (Granta)

Blood Tender, by Rachel Ingrams, (Tindal Street)

When We Were Romans, by Mathew Kneale, (Picador)

The Children of Freedom, by Marc Levy, (Harper)

Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis, (Sort of Books)

Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction, by Alison MacLeod, (Hamish Hamilton)

Remedy, by Anne Marsella, (Portobello)

The Family That Couldn't Sleep, by D.T. Max, (Portobello)

The Bloomsday Dead, by Adrian McKinty, (Serpent's Tail)

Feather Man, by Rhyll McMaster, (Marion Boyars)

Queuing for Beginners, by Joe Moran, (Profile)

Season of the Witch, by Natasha Mostert, (Bantam)

Twenty Eight: Stories of AIDS in Africa, by Stephanie Nolen, (Portobello)

Serious Things, by Gregory Norminton, (Sceptre)

Chinese Whispers, by Hsiao-Hung Pai, (Figtree)

Train to Trieste, by Domnica Radulescu, (Doubleday)

Gold, by Dan Rhodes, (Canongate)

The Good Plain Cook, by Bethan Roberts, (Serpent's Tail)

Vicky Had One Eye Open, by Darryl Samaraweera, (Burning House)

The Forger, by Cioma Schönhaus, (Granta)

Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart, (Granta)

Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth?, by Andrew Sims & Joe Smith, (Constable & Robinson)

I Think There's Something Wrong With Me, by Nigel Smith, (Black Swan)

Rainbow's End, by Lauren St.John, (Hamish Hamilton)

The Abyssinian Proof, by Jenny White, (Orion)

West stooge or real chronicler?

BOOKER REACTION FROM INDIA

In India, no one talks about poverty now-a-days. Not even the leftists. What you hear instead is that India is shining, a super-power, and most of its people are getting rich every day. It's of course a myth that the country's politicians, most being neocon converts, and industrial biggies have been assiduously building for the past few years.

It's interesting that Aravind Adiga has attacked this myth hard and laid the country bare, warts and all, through his Booker-winning novel The White Tiger. "so where is shining India everyone's talking about? It was time someone broke the myth," said Adiga in an interview just after the announcement of the award.

In a report titled Western stooge or true chronicler of India? The Times of India writes: But opinion among Adiga's countrymen was divided, with many seeing the young man, partly brought up in Australia, as a story-teller stooge of the West for laying India bare...

I scanned some other newspapers for reactions, but nowhere it was so harsh and savage. Clearly, it reflects the newsgroup's own point of view.

The Hindu, a respected daily from Chennai, has an editorial on Adiga's success.

"The debutant’s novel beat the odds with its unusual voice and its unsparing vision of an India that many may prefer not to see. The White Tiger is a stunningly brave narrative of our times and its triumph is well deserved."

Aravind Adiga wins the Man Booker Prize 2008

The 33 year-old Adiga took home the £50,000 prize for his debut novel The White Tiger. He is only the third debut novelist to claim the award in Booker Prize history, and, according to the Guardian, is the second-youngest Booker winner ever

Aravind Adiga was born in Madras on 23rd October 1974 and studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities. He is a former correspondent for TIME magazine in India. He currently lives in Mumbai.

The Booker judges said, "In the end, The White Tiger prevailed because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure. The novel undertakes the extraordinarily difficult task of gaining and holding the reader's sympathy for a thoroughgoing villain. The book gains from dealing with pressing social issues and significant global developments with astonishing humour.
Feel interested in The White Tiger: A Novel?

Possessed by Shadows/ Donigan Merritt

I don’t usually review books in this blog, but this is an important novel, and I want to share my reading experience. The novel is Possessed by Shadows by Donigan Merritt (Other Press, New York).

PBS is about a woman climber Molly – a terminal brain tumour patient – and her husband Tom, also a climber, taking a trip to the mountains to fulfill her desire to die in the mountains, her passion for the better part of her 34 years of life. It’s epic material, and Donigan handles it with just as deftness and restraint as it demands.

You find two voices in the novel: Tom’s sophisticated, savvy, occasionally morose voice, and Molly’s unfettered, jovial and confessional one. Together they create their individual and collective stories, and form a unique narrative that is fascinating and irresistible. But the novel’s main strength is its humanity quotient. The novel is full of guileless but believable characters all belonging to the community of climbers. Their actions and talks seem to be brimming with humanity, in a land not really famous for it, and never for once flag and suck.

Towards the end of 239-page book, you see Tom carrying Molly on his back strapped in a rescue chair up the slope braving the odd weather. Stefan, his friend, another climber accompanies him. “She did not speak, but Sefran told me that from time to time her eyes were open and she seemed to be trying to focus.” Then Molly dies in the circumstances she craved for, but she had already been in a coma. “I saw blood trickling from her ear. She struggled for air less than 10 seconds and then stopped. Everything stopped and there was only the wind buffeting the tent walls…I ran my fingers through her fine long hair. She was dead.” Great depiction, without being banal or stereotype.

But PBS is as much about death as about life. Or rather, it’s a riveting narrative about a circle we call human life.

I think Donigan Merritt is a brilliant and real writer. I recommend this novel to all readers of literary fiction.

Le Clezio interview

Q : Your novels also have an autobiographical side. Do you get the impression of being the archivist of your own history, of your own experience of life?

LC : My favourite novelists are Stevenson and Joyce. They drew their inspiration from their first years of life. Through writing they relived their past and tried to understand the "whys" and "hows" of it. When you read Joyce’s Ulysses, you truly have the impression that Joyce was not aiming to relate the story of the present moment, but to express everything that was in him, everything that made him what he was. He resurrected the slightest sounds of the street, snippets of conversations, the corporal punishment suffered at school and which still haunted him like an obsession. Naipaul too, returns in his imagination to his first years of education. Literature is only strong when it manages to express the first sensations, the first experiences, the first ideas, the first disappointments.

Read the full interview.

French writer wins the Nobel in literature 2008

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 is awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

"author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".

Nobel Prize for Literature 2008: Press Release
About Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

(updated Oct 10) Le Clezio is largely unknown outside of his own country France where he has long been known and respected as an anti-establishment figure. He has been writing for about four decades, but just a few of his translated works are now available, and those too in not so new and tidy condition.

An interesting thing about Le Clezio is that all of his works have been published so far by independent and university-affiliated publishers(real writers take heart!). Now it would be far more interesting to watch how the publishing behemoths, some of whom must have rejected his works earlier, deal with this new Nobel Laureate.

Le Clezio was initially an experimentalist, but later switched to traditional form. His reaction to the Nobel Prize is worth a mention."I am very happy, and I am also very moved because I wasn't expecting this at all. Many other names were mentioned, names of people for whom I have a lot of esteem. I was in good company. Luck, or destiny, or maybe other reasons, other motives, had it so that I got it. But it could have been someone else."

My favourite Bengali writers are all dead and dying

Dearth of real writers in current Bengali literature

It’s autumn festival time in India, and you get some days off your work -medical practice, in my case. For years on end, I’ve used this "puja" time reading new works of Bengali literature, which have a way of landing in the market by way of special editions of almost every Bengali daily and periodical. These are really tomes, and you’ll get in each of them several novels (5 to 8 on an average), and more than a dozen stories by established and upcoming authors among other things. It’s practically impossible to read all of them, - it doesn’t make sense also – but you can choose your picks.

Until last year, I was a sucker for this Puja literature, and geekily bought and read quite a number of mags. This year I’ve not bought a single mag and ai’nt reading any work at all - decidedly of course. Though I wish to read a long essay by Taslima Nasreen published in Bangla Statesman. In it Taslima has written about her nightmarish brush with the Marxist Government during her last Kolkata sojourn.

Puja tomes have changed hugely from what they were in the past. Once these were focused on literature, now the shift is towards entertainment, following in the current trend of the market. So, what you find in them are all kinds of schlock things, and writers who can write them.

For the past few years I had pared down my reading list to just these writers: Shyamal Gangopadhyay, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Debesh Roy, Mahasweta Devi( a contender for the Nobel), Udayan Ghosh, Subimal Mishra. Shyamal Gangopadhyay, Bengal’s Marquez, died a few years ago. Sandipan is also dead. Udayan died last year. Mahasweta, being engaged now with her activist work most of the time, is not writing much fiction these days.

So, I’m left with Debesh Roy. Now, here was a writer who had life-experiences, knowledge, and writing prowess to write big novels which I’ve always enjoyed, and spoken highly of. He has steadfastly written quality fiction in spite of poor response from readers and publishers.

But strangely for me, when the Singur mass-movement started last year against the Marxist government's forced acquisition of farmers’ land for SEZ, Debesh Roy actively took side with the government. This was a stand against the underdogs whom he has championed for all of his life! It was painful for me. i let him die in my consciousness as a writer. Now I'm no longer interested in his work.

Subimal Mishra is another of my favourite authors. He’s anti-establishment, and like Udayan Ghosh, never wrote for any commercial mag. Yesterday I called him to learn where I could find his new writing. His phone rang, but there was none to pick up the receiver. For a while, he had been keeping in bad health – complications of his long-standing diabetes actually. I was worried. So I dashed an e-mail to his translatorV.Ramaswamy(Harper Collins’ India would publish Subimal's selected stories next year)enquiring about his whereabouts. Ramaswamy's e-mail reply: “I tried to contact him too. No idea. Might be shifted to hospital.”

Dumb down your work, or...

Real Writers be damned!

"I have had a weird feeling that I'm being dumbed down by my publishers and it's interesting there's an agenda of how it should be in the marketplace.I'm amazed they are even trying it on"

--Dame Margaret, British novelist who takes over as chair of The Society of Authors.

Top novelist feels pressure..

Nobel Prize for Literature 2008

Is it Haruki Murakami this year?
Once again, the Nobel Prize season is here. The prize announcements will start next week with medicine, and end as always with literature. In all probablity the Nobel Prize for literature will be announced on Oct 16 this year.

The punters have been already at it. Their hot favourites this time are:
Claudio Magris at 3/1
Adonis at 4/1
Amos Oz at 5/1
Joyce Carol Oates at 7/1
Philip Roth at 7/1
Don DeLillo at 10/1
Haruki Murakami at 10/1
Les Murray at 10/1
Yves Bonnefoy at 10/1
Arnošt Lustig at 14/1

Horace Engdahl, Swedish Academy's permanent Secretary, has already frustrated the American authors and their fans with his statement,
"The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature."Full Report here

Murakami, Murray and Bonnefoy are three big contenders this year. All of them are winners of Franz Kafka Prize, regarded by many as a precursor to the Nobel. Murakami, of course, has the best chance but the Nobel jury has a healthy aversion to the bestselling authors.

Have you read Claudio Magris , the topper of the list? Do you know which language he represents? No prize for guessing.

Last word: the 18-member Nobel award jury is quite unpredictable, and is used to spring a surprise. Think it selected Elfriede Jelinek, though for good reason, whom nobody ever thought to be a winner!

(updated -5 october) Adam Kirsch responds to Horace Engdahl's remark on American writers in Nobel Gas in Slate.

(updated -6 October) Another good but more balanced response to Horace Engdahl's remark in the New York Times
Lost in Translation? A Swede's Snub of US Lit.

The Jewel of Medina

Will it be an Important Book?

Things that happened after Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses have not yet faded from our memories. Violence, murder, Fatwa, round-the clock security cover for the writer outside his house. Fortunately for us, the great writer survived all this, and is still alive and writing.

From all indications, the Rushdie book rerun is going to happen with Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina to be released in October this year. The only difference is that while Rushdie's was a literary work, Sherry's is a mass-market pulp.

I just read through the Prologue available on the net. In a typical historical-fiction style, she tries to recreate Prophet's physical relationship with one of his child-brides named Aisha. I had no idea that the prophet had child-brides. What I knew about him was that he married a lady called Khadiza some years senior to him.

I don't know where the writer gets her facts from and whether the sources of her research are authentic. But what I'm more bothered about is the subject of her choice. It's more prurient than blasphemous. And for sure, she does not write it from any sense of any kind of conviction. All talk about women empowerment and freedom in this context are shit. This is out and out a commercial venture. Of course, it's a bestseller that has presold.

Back to my reading. The prologue is a polished and professionally edited piece that is intended to whip your emotions, but actually reads bland and contrived. It might excite morons, but I'd wager that few discerning readers would go past it into the first chapter of the book.

I feel pity for the author. Allah forgive her!

Prologue to The Jewel of Medina

Jose Saramago News

I'm equally excited and disappointed that Jose Saramago, the Nobel Laureate, has started a blog since Sept 17. Excited because I can't think of someone like Saramago's stature can embrace blogging as a medium, and that too at 85. Disappointed because he's writing in Portuguese, not in English.

Anyway, take a look at it
Saramago's blog

I tried to read it using Google's translation tool, but failed to figure out anything. I think it's related to George W. Bush.

Could anybody translate it for me?

Project 10^100: a writing geek review

Sometimes, you get a barely 200-word ad more compelling and enjoyable reading than a fashionable book. Most fashionable books suck because of their no-brainer stuff and lack of insights, and it feels like time wasted to read such books. But read this ad: not only it's intellectually stimulating and interesting, it also touches a chord, and evokes the best in you as a human being.

“Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big.
In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the simple wisdom that beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people.”
(In this consumerist climate, it sounds like an advice from a spiritual guru, but you would like it because there is a truth ingrained in it.)

"In other words, helping helps everybody, helper and helped alike."
(Great play of words – almost mesmerizing!)

“The question is: what would help? And help most?
At Google, we don't believe we have the answers, but we do believe the answers are out there. Maybe in a lab, or a company, or a university -- but maybe not.
Maybe the answer that helps somebody is in your head, in something you've observed, some notion that you've been fiddling with, some small connection you've noticed, some old thing you have seen with new eyes.
If you have an idea that you believe would help somebody, we want to hear about it. We're looking for ideas that help as many people as possible, in any way, and we're committing the funding to launch them. You can submit your ideas and help vote on ideas from others. Final idea selections will be made by an advisory board.
Good luck, and may those who help the most win.”
(I’m not sure it’s wholly a noble and altruistic cause. There might be a cause behind this cause. Nevertheless, I like the content and the way it’s delivered.)

But I’m not submitting any new idea for the project. What any other new idea can a writing geek have except that more and more people read more books by real writers to know the other people, to know the various human conditions, to know the world, and in the process morphing into as human as humanly possible?

The importance of being Philip Roth

"I don't have any sense of audience, and least of all when I'm writing. The audience I'm writing for is me, and I'm so busy trying to figure the damn thing out, and having so much trouble, that the last thing I think of is: "What is X, Y or Z going to be thinking of it?"

Philip Roth is 75, and has just published a new novel called Indignation . Now, you'll find a flood of reviews in various magazines, and across the web. Ignore it. It's time to read some good interviews with the great living American novelist.

The story of my lives
An audience with Philip Roth (Thanks to John Self for the link)

Amazing tribute for DFW

NSCAR Cancels 2008 season schedule

"LOUDON, NH—Shock, grief, and the overwhelming sense of loss that has swept the stock car racing community following the death by apparent suicide of writer David Foster Wallace has moved NASCAR to cancel the remainder of its 2008 season in respect for the acclaimed but troubled author of Infinite Jest, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.

In deference to the memory of Wallace, whose writing on alienation, sadness, and corporate sponsorship made him the author of the century in stock car racing circles and whom NASCAR chairman Brian France called "perhaps the greatest American writer to emerge in recent memory, and definitely our most human," officials would not comment on how points, and therefore this year's championship, would be determined."

Why paint a gloomy picture of the world?

László Krasznahorkai interview

Q: In a situation like this, what do writing and literature give you? What do books mean? Obviously, not the way out. Nor does writing function as a form of personal salvation for you. Then, shall we say it is the gentlest form of rebellion? Or does it play the role of issuing certain signals?

A: Whenever I manage to state my view in its full extent, my partner in conversation, anywhere in the world, invariably reminds me, “If you paint such a gloomy picture of the world, then why write?” This is a subtle way of asking why I don't shoot myself in the head right there and then, and indeed, why I hadn't done so a long while ago. My critical remarks do not mean that I think or have ever thought that literature could directly interfere with the workings of the society it criticises or rejects. The impact that a writer can exert over his or her own society is far more subtle, almost indecipherably complex and indirect, working through a number of transformations. I even doubt whether at such a degree of remoteness you can still call this an impact and an influence. In Oriental cultures, this question has found an almost radical solution: art had absolutely nothing to do with the direct, palpable reality of its own age. On the contrary, real artists were not “members” of their own society, in the same way that saints never are. This way, the art they produced did not exist as an integrated, definable, graspable part of society. Instead, it found its place in an emphatically spiritual space which nonetheless was still perceived as a part of reality.

László Krasznahorkai is a contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse who inspires comparison with Gogol and Melville.

When a real writer kills himself

David Foster Wallace was a brilliant humanist writer

..all great writers -- and I have no doubt that he was one -- have a preeminent purpose: to tell the truth. David Foster Wallace's particular vocation was to allow us to see just how fraught and complicated, how difficult yet how necessary, that telling had become -- not just for him, but for all of us. What will we do without him?

DFW was only 46. He had talent to burn, time to write, had a nice teaching job in a college, and had people reading and loving his books. So, why did he kill himself?

DFW was a master of byzantine prose and virtuoso thinking. He was an acknowledged post-modernist who had great imagination and intellect. So, why did he kill himself?

In a country where empathy is considered a weakness, DFW had empathy and compassion - a lot of them - for his fellow human beings and was a brilliant humanist writer. So, why did he kill himself?

He was not happy at the new trends of the publishing world.

He was not happy at the chaos and insanity spiralling around him in his own country.

At one point he must have stopped to see the point of life.

What an end for a truly great and creative mind!

Booker shortlist

Linda Grant is my choice

“These novels are intensely readable, each of them an extraordinary example of imagination and narrative.”

In his press conference, Michael Portillo, the chair of the Booker jury, does not utter the word 'literature' even once. He does not emphasize on the originality or voice of any writer. Evidently, the focus of the Booker award has shifted from the quality fiction to the popular/pulp fiction. And the judges are no longer interested in literary fiction alone. Now it can be any kind of fiction, even a bad thriller, that the jury can take into consideration. What a shift for the prestigious literary award!
-------------------------------------------------------------------The Man Booker Prize 2008 shortlisted novels are:
Aravind Adiga The White Tiger (Atlantic)
Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber)
Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies (John Murray)
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago)
Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency (Fourth Estate)
Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole (Hamish Hamilton)
This year's judging panel is chaired by Michael Portillo former MP and Cabinet Minister. He is joined by Alex Clark, editor of Granta; Louise Doughty, novelist; James Heneage, founder of Ottakar's bookshops and Hardeep Singh Kohli, TV and radio broadcaster
------------------------------------------------------------------ As we all know, the Booker longlist this year was mediocre. They took all sorts of fiction based on their new criteria -even such crappy books as Child 44 and Girl in a Blue Dress. It was expected they would pare down to a shorter, reasonable shortlist this year. Nope. The shortlist has six titles, and most are the kind that you would give up reading half-way and even in case you finish them, you would never like to recall your reading experience.

The only book that I liked is Linda Grant’s The Clothes on their Backs.It is based on 70's immigrant experience, and addresses various questions about the nature of suffering and survival. It is an outstanding work in terms of both theme and treatment. Of course, I would like this title to be the winner.

But I’ve kind of hunch that Linda would not make it in the final round. Amitav Ghosh is in the list, and he is now the best and most suitable contender by establishment metrics. All efforts might now be directed to make him the winner.

From a Jorge Louis Borges interview

Below are some quotes from a 1984 Borges interview I came across in le rubi. Here is a real writer talking without any pretension about his world of reading and writing.

"I’ve read very few novels in my life; for me the foremost novelist is Joseph Conrad."

"For me reading and writing are two equally pleasurable activities. When writers talk about the torture of writing, I don’t understand it."

"Since I have committed the indecency of turning eighty-five, I confirm without melancholy that my memory is full of verses and full of books. I can’t see past the year 1955—I lost my reader’s vision—but if I think about my past life, I think of course about friends, lovers also, but I think most of all about books. My memory is full of quotes in many languages."

"I hope to be totally forgotten. I believe that this is death."

Being contemporary

A real writer's take

MR: What makes a literary work of its time? What makes it contemporary in an interesting or meaningful way? Do you care about being contemporary?

JPT: Literature has no real political or social role to play. Its role is primarily aesthetic. It’s an art. But it must absolutely offer a view of the world. I think writers should necessarily talk about the contemporary world; they should read it, decipher it, and reconstitute it. My choice of having Fuir take place in China, quite independently from my trip there in 2001, brought to light a desire to focus on the present, on the contemporary world as it is being built today, a world that is forever alive, moving on and transforming itself. China represents what is contemporary, in my mind. At some point in Fuir, we’re both in Paris and in China, it’s both daytime and nighttime, and the characters, connected by a cellphone, are both in a night train in China and standing in the sun outside of the Musée du Louvre in Paris. In the past, it would not have been possible to write that scene, for the obvious reason that cellphones did not exist 15 years ago. Starting from a new object of daily life, one discovers a new use of the novel.


Jean-Philippe Toussiant interview here

Obituary of an unremarkable man

My father – the first imposing figure in my life – died yesterday. He was a doctor, and a negativist, but one of the very few contented men I’ve encountered in my life. He was eighty four, and lived life in a profound way.

He died of acute bronchopneumonia, but the real disease was the cancer of lung. He had cancer of the larynx twenty years ago, but was treated successfully for it with radiotherapy, and had almost a normal life, devoting time to three passions of his life – crosswords, Bengali cinema, and cricket.

Perhaps every man can sense the arrival of death in due time, but he knew it more in advance and accurately. He kept his eyes shut tight, refused to eat or respond to our interrogations, and on rare occasions when he opened his eyes, he fought hard to check his tears. The message was clear: he was unwilling to depart. But what was more remarkable was that he was in a sulking mode till his last moment.

I’m the eldest of his ten children, and have not lived with him much. Circumstances had so much to play around against developing a strong bond between us. He was a domineering father and always wished that I follow his advice to the full. I revolted. I liked writing, but he discouraged it. I was more inclined to intellectual and literary things. He would not approve it. He wanted me to become a doctor following in the tradition of our family. I decided not to oblige him. So at my first chance, I left the family – I was eighteen at the time - to pursue my own passion and kind of snapped all relations with him. It meant lots of struggle for me, but the fun thing is I ended up being a doctor myself graduating from a premier medical college in Bengal. He had the last laugh.

His attitude towards other children was different. He proved a careless father to them. So barely had I started my medical practice than they began to gravitate to me one by one. I had to fend for them. I had to take care of their education. And he never sent any help whatsoever.

He joined us many many years later when my siblings were somewhat settled, and some sisters married off. And then he opted to live with my youngest brother, an engineer-turned-entrerpreneur, who was going great guns at a very young age. My father sold out all his property in the country, and must have brought a good, if not large, sum with him. He never discussed it with me, and I never enquired him of it.

At one point, I lived several blocks away from him. I saw him in the market, scanning fish, vegetables and fruits before buying them. Sometimes I saw him on the road taking his morning walk. Sometimes he would visit my flat for a brief while. He seemed to be fond of my son. I have heard them discussing cricket.

When I visited him at my youngest brother’s residence, he was either busy fiddling with his crossword with dictionaries scattered around him or seeing some live cricket match on TV with so much attention that he didn’t notice me. But when he noticed, he welcomed me with a shy smile and asked me to sit down, but no further words, and our conversation never progressed.

We celebrated his 80th birthday with great style. As usual, he was impeccably dressed in his starched while dhoti, and punjabi, and seemed to enjoy the party. When asked to say something for the occasion, he said that he was indeed a very happy man, and had no grouse or complaint against anybody or anything as such, but would fervently wish that some, at least one of our children, might be a doctor.

He was not a successful doctor for whatever reasons, but a good clinician. He had great love for his profession.

In his deathbed, when he had severe spasms of breathlessness, he said to me in one lucid moment, “I have never harmed anybody in my life. So, why do I suffer this way?”

I had no reply for him.

Is there any relation between one’s karmas and sufferings? I’m not sure.