And now digitized Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes' works will be published as E-books for the first time in US on the first anniversary of his death in Mexico city, according to PW.

Terrorism in Indian fiction | Politics in Literature

Terrorism in Indian fiction
 We live in a world petrified by the monster of terrorism. This will obviously reflect in fiction too. And it’s no surprise that Indian authors have jumped on to the terrorism bandwagon.  

 Politics in literature 
The raw material of writers is the entire world that we live in; a world that continuously shapes us as we in turn shape it, through our poetry or fiction. The writer is someone who has no choice but to be engaged with society, which means political engagement. Nothing escapes the snare of the political, big P or small p – it is about the price of bread, the paycheck you bring home, how you interact with neighbours or whom you choose to romance. You can rebel against the latter or hew your own path, but your choice will be shaped by political concerns, and those have always included religion, race or ethnicity, sex and gender. Today, perhaps, more than ever.

Philip Roth's latest honour

Philip Roth's latest honor was as much for what he has done for other writers as for his own work.

Roth received the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award Tuesday night. He was cited for such novels as "Portnoy's Complaint" and "American Pastoral," but also for his advocacy in the 1970s and 1980s for writers in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern bloc countries during the Cold War. PEN, in the midst of a weeklong "World Voices Festival," is an international writers' organization that defends human rights.

Western or Eastern readers

 I don’t believe in western or eastern readers as it’s a gross stereotype.

Kuwaiti Saud Alsanousi wins Arabic 'Booker' 2013

Kuwaiti writer and novelist, Saud Alsanousi has been announced as the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) for his novel Saq Al-Bamboo (The Bamboo Stalk). The prize is worth $50,000. The announcement took place at the Rocco Forte Hotel in Abu Dhabi during the opening of Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

Writing a good sentence | writers who have skin in the game

Writing a good sentence is having to hit the bull’s-eye each and every time. A sentence has to serve so many purposes. It has to provide forward momentum. It has to tell us what we need to know. It has to suggest character. It has to stand at a correct distance from the characters in order to let the reader know the authorial attitude. It has to have within it a kind of kinetic energy that reflects the book’s or a character’s tone. Its construction has to illuminate the larger preoccupations of the book. It has to be disciplined and cannot be beautiful for the sake of beauty. The rhythmic interplay between sentences determines length and sound, smoothness versus percussiveness, which words end one sentence and which begin the next.
--Marisa Silver.

I like fiction by writers engaged in trying to make sense of their lives and of the world in which they find themselves, writers who palpably have skin in the game, and this makes me particularly resistant to historical fiction.
--Jonathon Franzen

Paula Fox interview |The Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013:

Paula Fox interview
"So I always write about the place I am in, but I also invent. I don’t know what the invention is, for me it is a very inadequate word. Storyteller is better. I like it better. It probably dates back to the cave dwellers. One would get up and tell the rest a story. I follow that tradition.’"

The Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2013:
"From satirists to humorists to sweeping epic-spinners, these writers have a command of language and their form which is simply astonishing. They show that the novel has a bold, brilliant future in Britain. I could not be prouder of the list." 

Read the list here

The 2013 Pulitzer Prixe for fiction goes to Adam Johnson

Awarded to "The Orphan Master's Son" by Adam Johnson (Random House), an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart. 

Related Post
ToB Rooster goes to Adam Johnson

Unhappy literary trends or manifesto of a new literary magazine

Not only the language but the ETHOS of the corporate world has taken possession of art and literature. Writers and artists must “brand” themselves (even cows understand the pitfalls of this). Poems, paintings, novels, and sculptures are start-up projects in need of investment. Imagination is, as ever, an unaffordable production cost.

Read the manifesto of SPOLIA,  new monthly literary magazine edited by Jessa Crispin

Latest Haruki Murakami novel on sale

                                   5,00000 COPIES SOLD IN HOURS
More than 100 people lined up atmidnight at a Tokyo bookstore, eager to get their hands on the latest HarukiMurakami novel that went on sale on Friday, the first in three years by theglobal bestselling author and Nobel prize favorite.

"From July of his sophomore year at college to January next year, Tsukuru Tazaki was living while mostly thinking about dying,"

Perihan Magden interview

My novels are auto-biographical in a psychological, even spiritual way. Therefore they are always very disturbing to work on. Even when they are finished I am not done with them. I always find them unbearable to read, to confront: both because of my endless dissatisfaction as an artist and because I feel like not wanting to listen to my own voice - like hearing a recording of my voice talking to a psychiatrist.

The 21 Books from the New Millenium Every Man Should Read

GQ publishes an interesting list of 21 novels of the 21st century. Of course, it's US-centric and far from being comprehensive. Anyway, I take delight in the fact that  it has included 2666 by Roberto Bolano.

Robert Silvers interview

We’re constantly struggling to master the flood.

A writer's sign of superior sensibility?

I see it as a sign of a superior sensibility that I can’t even read a bank statement.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala passes away at 86

For years, people who read Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's novels assumed she was born in India. She wrote about swamis, social climbers, duplicitous landlords and other characters from the Indian bourgeoisie who inevitably found themselves colliding with curious visitors from the West.
But Jhabvalawas a Westerner herself: a German Jew displaced by war to England, who married an Indian man and settled in his country. She absorbed enough of subcontinental culture to portray it with clarity and comic sensibility in books that earned her comparisons to Jane Austen

George Saunders quote

Justice is the most important thing in the world, and the birthright of all people. Especially for me and the people in my immediate circle. For people just outside my circle, I believe in it somewhat less, I suppose. For those way out of my circle, I am not necessarily against it, but tend to not fight for it very hard. For those as far out of my circle as one can possibly get, I am very much against justice. But it’s funny – as they move closer to my circle, I am more for it.

ToB Rooster goes to Adam Johnson

 Adam Johnson who was bumped at one point of ToB resurfaced by readers' vote (big readers, these ToB addicts) and now wins the Rooster, thanks to judges.

I'm happy the most-deserved novel has won. Truth to tell, I've just read bits and excerpts of TOMS from here and there. But I'm now hungry for the whole book. Sure I'm going to buy it.

I was a first -timer at ToB, but I must admit I enjoyed it a lot. Every night, on returning from my clinic, I would log on to ToB page and read the judge's review, then the match commentary and finally the readers' comments. It was a great and enriching experience for me, and I would go to bed with a unique learning happiness every time.

 Thanks to ToB team and viva lectura!


I’ll admit I’m a ToB addict, so it’s a special honor to be included in the bracket and to survive some fascinating matchups. And to get bumped, only to Zombie back? My highest achievement. Really, I read it all—the reviews, the color commentary, the reader comments, the NOOK ads—and it always got my day going by thinking about books: why we write them, how we read them, how we speak to them, what they mean to us. 

I will now demand that my publisher place silver Rooster stickers on all the paperbacks. But first: Deliver unto me one live rooster! It will live in our backyard in San Francisco, until my sleep-deprived neighbors murder it. And if readers will make suggestions for what we should call it, I promise to select a name from one of the comments. 

Finally, a special thanks to all the readers, reviewers, and authors who contributed to a pretty dang awesome celebration of books.

Morning News Tournament of Books: BS knocks out TOMS

In the semi-final of The Morning News Tournament of Books, Chris Ware's  Building Stories knocks out Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son.

The Orphan Master’s Son has masterfully pulled back the curtain on life in North Korea—and, as Dennis Rodman’s recent unexpected visit seems to indicate, we may soon begin to learn much more about our planet’s most mysterious country—but Building Stories has pulled a curtain back on what it means to be human. For that, I say that Chris Ware is not only a good draw-er, but the best damn writer of 2012.

Mikhail Shiskhin on The novel

The novel is a boat. Words must be revived in order for the boat to be genuine, so that I may climb aboard and sail out of this solitary life to a place where they love us and are waiting for us all. Save myself. And take all of my characters with me. And the reader too.

Related Post
Mikhail Shiskhin interview

Michael Frayn interview

We try to understand the world by seeing it in terms of some kind of narrative, and I think most of my plays and books are about that process. But I think there are some things about which it's theoretically impossible to have precise knowledge – namely, other people's intentions and feelings and probably one's own as well.

Chinua Achebe dies at 82

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist seen by millions as the father of African literature, has died at the age of 82

Related post
Chinua Achebe on literature and ethnicity

George Saunders' new concern

I don’t think you could ever make a good story by thinking if it would sell. But there is some kind of intersection between trying to write as sincerely and truthfully and well as you can and then some idea that a good-hearted reader would connect. That much you can control, I think. But what you can’t control, I am noticing, is once the book is done and it either does really well or really poorly. You can’t predict that. There’s an element that you can’t predict or control. So I don’t think you can make much of it. It’s just luck.

 In The Morning News George Saunders discusses his audience problem and other things with  Robert Birnbaum.

Richard Nash's idea of business of literature

The business of literature is blowing shit up. 

Even when there's money in writing ..

But the truth is, there’s a reason most well-known writers still teach English. There’s a reason most authors drive dented cars. There’s a reason most writers have bad teeth. It’s not because we’ve chosen a life of poverty. It’s that poverty has chosen our profession.
Even when there’s money in writing, there’s not much money

Why Mikhail Shishkin refused to participate in Book Expo

A country where power has been seized by a corrupt, criminal regime, where the state is a pyramid of thieves, where elections have become  farce, where courts serve the authorities, not the law, where there are political prisoners, where state television has become a prostitute, where packs of impostors pass insane laws that are returning everyone to the Middle Ages—such a country cannot be my Russia. I cannot and do not want to participate in an official Russian delegation representing that Russia.

via Blog of a Bookslut

Are you watching the Morning News Tournament of Books?

I've been following, the first time, the Morning News Tournament of Books with great interest. As of now, I have no clue as to how they get their books for the 'tournament' except that they are all published in 2012. But I see they have excellent judges on board - great literary tasters - and I'm enjoying their words to such an extent that some of their observations I find myself copying  in a separate notebook.

Example:
It’s a reminder of what fiction has the power to do: Change the way you see the world. It’s a book that warrants close reading (by everyone) and it’s one that we’ll still be reading 50 years from now. And it’s the clear winner in this round. Where’d You Go, Bernadette can’t compete with the ambition and scope of The Orphan Master’s Son.

This is  Elliot Halt writing about The Orphan Master's Son. I wonder if any reviewer would be so much open and generous about a book today..

Equally interesting is the match commentary between Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, both novelists, but great readers at the same time. You get gem in their conversation, and I'm simply blown away by their intelligent and incisive dissection and interpretation of novels with their individual but insightful approaches.

Example:
 What impresses me is that Homes can get me to take these people seriously as they ricochet from oddness to oddness. I see her as a kind of post-post-modernist. There’s something Pynchonian about her book, but rather than swallowing the world and leaving us a black hole, like Pynchon does, Homes lets some light escape. It’s considerably more hopeful than some of her previous work, which I think disappointed some of her longtime fans, but I thought it was her best book yet.

 I highly recommend this tournament -for discerning readers, of course.

Sayed Kashua quote

I wasn't sure I could write about love and drinking in Arabic. Perhaps God cannot read Hebrew.

Matias Viegener's take on tweeting and texting

Tweeting and texting may not have led to better writing, but I’d argue that they’ve led to better close readings. Look at the way a cryptic tweet gets scrutinised. For many people today, reading is a kind of code-breaking. I’m fascinated by the powers of condensation, quotation, and metaphor, for which social media has tremendous potential. If an emerging writer wanted a form of realism that reflected our “lived” experiences, it seems to me that working in and through these new modalities has more potential that the narrative novel, essentially a 19th century invention.

Marilynne Robinson's favourite genre

Oddly enough, my favorite genre is not fiction. I’m attracted by primary sources that are relevant to historical questions of interest to me, by famous old books on philosophy or theology that I want to see with my own eyes, by essays on contemporary science, by the literatures of antiquity. Every period is trapped in its own assumptions, ours, too, so I am always trying, without much optimism, to put together a sort of composite of the record we have made that gives a larger sense of the constant at work in it all, that is, ourselves. The project is doomed from the outset, I know. Still. 

Elizabeth Strout interview

I researched Somalia and the Somali community population in this country and even the camps. The research I did was just enormous. I would say there were four or five years where I just had books piled up. I got very interested in it. But even as I was doing it, I thought, "I don't think I can take on a point of view," but wanted to. There was so much I absorbed—all these Somali proverbs. I realized in the final version that there is not one Somali proverb, and I learned 300. 

Related Post:
Elizabeth Strout wins 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction

Mo Yan on Marxism

What Marx wrote in the "The Communist Manifesto" was of great beauty. However, it seems to be very hard to make that dream come true. But then again, I look at those European, specifically Northern European, states and societies and wonder: Would these welfare states even be thinkable without Marx? We used to say in China that in a way Marxism has saved capitalism. Because those who benefited most from his ideology seem to be societies in the West. We Chinese, Russians and Eastern Europeans seem to have misunderstood Marxism.

Related
Mo Yan according to his translator

Deborah Eisenberg interview

I write down some little thing, and then eventually something comes out of that, or doesn’t. I’m just trying to get down one accurate sentence and then another accurate sentence. And most of my time is spent rearranging the little counters in the sentence. And then the little counters on the page, and then the little counters in the whole.

Is Philip Roth the greatest living American novelist?

 Roth was never just a novelist to readers but an iconoclast and narcissist, a Jewish cultural hero (villain to some), a (probable) misogynist, a literary celebrity who folded his own life into novels like they were tabloids (or metafictions?) and, after Toni Morrison, our great American hope.

But is he the greatest living American novelist?

Finnegans Wake a bestseller in China!

A Chinese writer friend attributes the good sales of Finnegans Wake to media hype and unusual advertisements, which is at least partly true. Xinhua net reports that large outdoor billboards for the book have appeared in eight major Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing. Deploying such billboards for a book is itself unusual. Shanghai’s DF Daily notes that the book’s first print run of 8,000 copies was sold out in three weeks under “intensive marketing.” A Shanghai resident commented on Sina weibo that she passes by a billboard for the book every day and it makes her “really want to challenge the high difficulties; but what if I can’t understand?” This reminds me of another comment I saw — at an online bookstore website — from a young woman who purchased One Hundred Years of Solitude: “I simply wanted to know why this book was selling so well.” She found the book hard to understand but “felt different after careful savoring.” 

George Saunders on his writing process

 For me, that process of taking a first draft and working with it over a period of months is EVERYTHING. That’s where a person finds out what he really means and (you could argue) who he really IS. So I suppose one danger is that we might get the idea that, you know, “to blurt, is to be.” The idea that whatever comes out is good and is us. Whereas someone who has really worked with text realizes - well, that neither one is “really” you, but that the considered version might represent a “higher” you - brighter, less willing to coast or condescend, funnier, and (mysteriously) also, I think, kinder.

Related
A conversation between George Saunders and his editor

Jerry Pinto bags The Hindu Literary Prize 2012

Journalist-author Jerry Pinto has bagged The Hindu Literary Prize 2012 for his novel Em and the Big Hoom.
I've not yet read any fiction by Jerry Pinto. But I have read his witty and hilarious columns, specially in the Statesman. He's a superb prose writer.

Haruki Murakami has a new novel in April | Believing in Fiction

New Murakami Novel
Literary giant Haruki Murakami is set to release his first novel in three years in April, publisher Bungeishunju Ltd. said.

Believing in Fiction
I have moments when my faith in fiction falters and thencomes to the edge of collapse. I find myself asking, “Am I really a believer?” And then, “Was I ever?” First to go are the disjointed, upended narratives of experimental fiction. Oh well ... Next, the virgin birth miracle of magical realism. But I was always Low Church on that one. It’s when the icy waters of skepticism start to rise round the skirts of realism herself that I know my long night has begun. All meaning has drained from the enterprise. Novels? I don’t know how or where to suspend my disbelief. What imaginary Henry said or did to nonexistent Sue, and Henry’s lonely childhood, his war, his divorce, his ecstasy and struggle with the truth and how he’s a mirror to the age—I don’t believe a word: not the rusty device of pretending that the weather has something to do with Henry’s mood, not the rusty device of pretending.

Confessions of a translator

As I was approaching 40, not an easy milestone for anybody, I suddenly realized that I had lost the urge to translate. It had become a routine, and that had always been my idea of a senseless existence – when life becomes routine.

The Tarantino of Russian literature | Asia's obsession with graphic novels

Vladimir Sorokin,
Many people don’tlike Sorokin, sometimes they hate him and more often than not they don’tunderstand him, mistaking the views of characters for the author’s own. 

Asia and Graphic novels

Printed graphic storytelling is an extension of all that has been performed for centuries across Asia, whether translating the ancient Mahabharata from verse and stage to the illustrated page in India, Cambodia and Nepal, in China’s Shuihu Zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh or The Water Margin) moved from verse to scrolls to comics, Osamu Tezuka’s reaction to his war experiences in the hugely popular tales of Astro Boy, or Shaun Tan’s stunning The Arrival. These are seen as being as legitimate and masterful as novels solely of the written word because in Asia, and particularly where symbols are used rather than alphabet, the image is also the word and carries perhaps more potency and power than any arrangement of letters.

Is the novel's time up?

“No one really knows what’s coming, what new economic models will exist, whether there will be a market,”

Lars Iyer interview

Both my manifesto and my novels are intended to foreground the difficulty of maintaining such a link between past and present, between neoliberal capitalism and European Modernism. For me, neoliberalism has deprived us of the conditions under which a certain literature – the literature, in particular, of Modernism – thrived. The vanguards have disappeared because there is no one in particular to offend. Literary fiction lives on, but it has become, for the most part, a kind of kitsch, depending on the most schematic ways of presenting character, plot, etc. – on a ‘realism’, a standardised system of representation, that is completely at one with the generic models of taste on which advertising and marketing depend.

It takes years to become a writer: Cheryl Strayed

Grace Paley said that she would write so she could taste life twice – she’d have the experience and then relive it in writing. I think that that’s true for me, too.
I couldn’t have written this book at 26. I wasn’t yet the writer who wrote Wild. It takes years to become a writer. I had to throw myself into that experience and then I had to grow up to understand what it meant.

Yan Lianke interview

I understand the Chinese political and cultural environment well. I understand people who don't use their voice. As an intellectual and author I should require myself to do it first. If I don't do enough, I can't require other authors to do so. There's always a reason. There's always one book or another; timing. But I think as an author I could have taken more responsibility and I didn't.

           Yan Lianke is one of the  Man Booker International Prize 2013 finalists. 

Howard Jacobson quote

 In Jaipur, I saw a future for the book. 

In support of Salman Rushdie

The literary and film community today came out in support of controversial author Salman Rushdie and blamed the West Bengal government for cancellation of his visit to the metropolis. 

My apology to Salman Rushdie. Kolkata is my city and I'm ashamed you were refused permission to visit it.The fact is Kolkata has long been stripped of its cultural and intellectual identity, and is now  totally messed up with politics(capital P). How strange that the powers-that-be have no problem with Amitav Ghosh, but they see red in whatever you do, say and write without having any sense or vision of a real writer. Sorry Salman, and my apology to you once again on behalf of the city which was once the cultural capital of India..