In the opinion of ex-professor of literarture

Amis, McEwan and Rushdie are like "prep school boys showing off".

Arundhati Roy in Forbe World's most inspiring women list!

What gall Forbe World clubs Arundhati Roy with actor Angelina Jolie, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, first lady Michelle Obama and author J.K. Rowling! Even Oprah Winfrey, the topper of the list, is a mismatch when compared to Arundhati!

I wonder how Arundhati could be a role model for Forbe World's business-savvy readers.

Yet another ploy to suck in the great-look author by the corporate world?

Post-literate age?

"It's not a disaster that there are no good novels being written. There are wonderful novels written. It's that our brains are being disassembled right now and being put back together in a whole different shape, and that is not going to be conducive to reading a 300-page thing that doesn't have any links."

David Mitchell interview

In the Vanity Fair, John Lopez interviews David Mitchell.

Q:James Wood in the New Yorker was describing your books and he jokingly came up with the phrase post-postmodernism. If there were such a thing as post-postmodern literature, what do you think that might be?

A:Oddly enough, I’m not sure if novelists are the best people to ask whither-the-novel questions. For me, it’s a little like I’m a duckbilled platypus and I’m being asked a question about taxonomy. You won’t get much of an answer out of a platypus because they’re busy going about their business digging tunnels, catching fish, and having sex. You really have to ask a critic, or a taxonomist. I feel like I should have a pithy answer because I’m a novelist and you’re asking a question about the future of the novel, but the biggest question I ever get to is, “How can I make this damned book work?” I rarely ever put my head above the rampart and see where this big lumbering behemoth called global literature is going.

Seismic shift in narrative structure

"A new generation of authors are starting to think in more multi-linear ways about the way they can structure narrative."

Faulkner online

In the late 1950s, William Faulkner spent two years as the writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia, where he talked about his fiction, did some readings, and interacted with students. Now all of these have been digitalised and published online.

Saw Wai interview

In The Irrawaddy, Aye Chan Myate interviews Saw Wai, the artist and poet, who was released from prison recently after spending more than two years behind bars for publishing a poem in “The Love Journal” that contained the hidden words: “Power-hungry, insane Gen Than Shwe.

Q: In Burma, artists are not able to write about certain topics or use certain types of images.

A: Overcoming such difficulties is a big burden. In every era under any kind of government, artists must work to create new things that speak the truth. If we are united, one day things will get better.

To Kill A Mockingbird :50th anniversary of a no-publicity bestseller

In the Independent Helen Taylor re-evaluates Harper Lee's only novel.

Harper Lee observed clearly and wrote prophetically. For all the novel's occasional sentimentality and whimsy, she produced a powerful indictment of American racial history at a crucial moment, one which remains relevant to today's multi-cultural US. This book deserves its long-standing success.

Salman Rushdie interview

In the Hindu Literary review,Gauri Viswanathan interviews Salman Rushdie.

I think relativism is the dangerous death of liberalism. If you will justify anything that anybody does because it comes from their tradition, it means you abdicate your moral sense and you cease to be a moral being. Going back to the article you mentioned which talks about the question of women, if you were to take religion away as the justification, nobody would tolerate that for a minute. The kinds of limitations that women have been placed under and the crimes against women in the name of religion are so profound, and yet somehow people don't get as agitated about them as when the same things are done by somebody who wasn't using God as the reason. That seems like nonsense to me.

Whither Indian publishing?

Aditya Sudarshan has a thoughtful article Indian publishing needs to get less fun
in the Hindu Literary Review.

In the world of Indian English publishing, kitsch has begun to dominate the mainstream. Penguin India publishes ‘Metro Reads', books that they call ‘fun, feisty, fast'; Random House India produces the ‘Kama Kahani', a series of Indianised Mills and Boons; Hachette India openly states that it cares most about commercial thrillers; and with its latest, highly-marketed release, Johnny Gone Down, HarperCollins India seems to be headed in the same direction. These are all books that openly disclaim any particular literary merit. They are projected instead as ‘fun' reads — with the implication that only a killjoy could possibly protest them.

Lit News: H.G. Alder's "Panorama" to be republished

Good news for literature lovers: to mark the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of H.G. Adler, his autobiographical novel "Panorama" is going to be republished. Rated as "among the greats of world literature", Panorama was written way back in 1948, and it took twenty years before a publisher had the guts to publish it.

Ilana Hammerman interview

Haaretz publishes an interesting and lengthy interview of editor and writer Ilana Hammerman.

Society has taken in so many innovative things that it has become immune. No one is knocked off their feet anymore - not by art and not by reality. Once people were shocked by Dadaism, for example. Now, if they see a toilet in the museum, so what? After all, they show us dead bodies and mangled limbs - what isn't shown and visible everywhere? Civilized society can digest anything.

'A' Literature !

"It's important to churn them out, it's important to be everywhere. Most importantly, it's all in the title...all title names should be 19-characters long."

Joyce Carol Oates interview

Q:A few months ago, you finished writing A Widow’s Memoir, an account of the death of your first husband, Raymond Smith. Can you comment on the process of writing it?

A:It isn’t a time I remember very clearly now. I had difficulty sleeping and would often write late at night, on sheets of paper folded lengthwise, which can fit neatly into a book which I might be reading, or trying to read. My normal concentration was shattered and so I “took notes” in the hope that some time in the future I could bring these fragmented passages into some sort of coherent whole. The effort seemed enormous at the time—like hauling myself up by hand, pulling on a thick rope.

Dzanc's Alternate List of 20 writers to watch

In an obvious response to The New Yorker's list of 20 best ficton writers under 40,
, Dzanc has now published an alternate list of 20. It's a relief to see that the Dzanc at least does not take into consideration a writer's age to make its list, and has a more comprehensive and wider view of fiction publishing.

Translating Haruki Murakami

The Danwei has published translating experiences of two Chinese translators of Haruki Murakami.

Just from the title 1Q84 it is obvious that Haruki Murakami is a naughty writer who likes to play word games. He likes putting heterogeneous things together; here it’s numbers and English letters.

Olga Yokarczuk interview

"Literature is always political"
Q: In the past, writers were seen as very powerful members of society, people who were capable of influencing the masses. Has that changed? What is the role of writers in contemporary society?

Olga Tokarczuk: The role of the writer has always been political, in the broadest possible sense of the political. When I say political, I mean a conscious approach to the reality that surrounds us. More often than not, such an approach should involve, in my opinion, the writer finding vantage points that will allow us to see the imperceptible.

The curious case of David Davidar

David Davidar, the publishing don, had quickly quit his job before his company was to fire him on charge of sexual harassment by his subordinate Lisa Rundle. An impressive line of writers, editors and publishers - most of them benificiaries in one way or other of Davidar's grand position in the publishing world -now stand by him. But is he really clean?

The point I’m trying to make here is that I’m not some outsider sitting on a fence and bitching because of some personal grouse. On the contrary. I’m being brutally honest and saying that sure, David had some excellent qualities. But he had some major vices too. And some were unacceptable. He drank way, way too much. He admitted to me that Frankfurt and London Book Fair were basically excuses for him to get drunk and stay sloshed for days on end, alongwith a group of other equally inebriated editors of major international houses who often pitched one another books and bought and sold one another’s pitches, sometimes for million dollar advances. He exulted in the sheer power he wielded and while he was always a thorough Gentleman in the best old-fashioned sense of the word, he also suffered from the classic Gentlemanly vices – a love for the company of other powerful decision-makers with fat chequebooks and money (not their own) to splurge as they pleased, a bottomless expense account, loads of alcohol…and, in David’s case, women. He loved women. He adored them. That was fine in itself, perhaps. But David had a problem: He fell in love with women at the drop of a spoon. He was always either in love with someone or other or had just been in love with one and was now in love with another…it was quite a mess. Everyone who knew David well knew this and while I can’t speak for the women he worked with, at least two other mutual friends that I know of – Dom Moraes and Jeet Thayil – were quite aware of David’s fondness for romance. He loved wooing women with roses and champagne, chocolates and nightgowns, candlelit dinners and long night drives. He lived for it. He was a man of big appetites and his biggest hunger was always for the romance of romance.

I was a publishing pariah: Lionel Shriver, Orange Prize for Fiction winning author

"I had made no money and I was a publishing pariah. I had no clout. The book came within a whisker of not being published. My former agent hated it and suggested I rewrite it as a comedy or without the school massacre."

Ruskin Bond interview

The Statesman has published an interesting interview with Ruskin Bond, the evergreen writer.

Do you think good writing often comes unbidden?
It can because sometimes, quite spontaneously, you might feel the urge to write a poem or an essay or just a personal entry in a journal. You’d call that spontaneous writing. It’s often the best that a writer does. Of course, there’re kinds of writing that require planning and organisation like long novels or biography. As far as poetry goes, even the essay at times, or even occasionally a short story, can be the result of spontaneous urge which is often unplanned.