Amit Chaudhuri interview

Q:What kind of novel is it that you write? I wouldn’t call you a noisy novelist.

A:I’m not a noisy novelist, no. I’d say I write novels involving random digressions and distractions. I cannot dwell on one thing for too long. So I am not the right candidate to write a novel of deep psychological realism and inwardness, or a heavily researched historical novel with a kind of social-science sensibility—a type of writing I abhor, actually, but which is endemic to a lot of Indian writing. My novels deal with inwardness but also with outwardness, with allowing oneself to be seduced by distractions and interruptions, to let oneself go there.

Full interview

Elizabeth Strout wins 2009 Pulitzer Prize in fiction

"In a certain way, no, I don’t have a stake in whether people like Olive. Some people have told me they absolutely love her, and some people have said they can’t stand her but they’re still very drawn to the book. And so I don’t have a stake in their reaction to Olive, I have a stake in their reaction to the book. I hope that even if they have a negative response to much of Olive’s behavior, they are maybe still drawn into this humanity that is underneath all of her action[s]. ...

It is a haunting experience. It’s a strange experience. And I’ve though about this with each of my books, because they, in a huge way, do occupy me [within] my mind, and when I’m not writing about them I’m mulling over who they are and what they might do. And I live with them and love them for long periods of time and then they’re done, and I sort of can’t imagine they ever will be done, but then they are. And so far, luckily, there’s been another emergence of something else."

Kamila Shamsie interview

Mohammad Hanif, writer, interviews fellow Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie, shortlisted for Orange Prize for fiction for her novel Burnt Shadows in Hindustan Times.

MH: Fifth novel at such a young age. How do you react to the label overachiever?

KS: I’m pretty sure if I were an over-achiever I’d try to...climb a mountain, test all the biryani recipes in the world ... learn how to juggle. Instead, All I do is sit around and write, so clearly I’m an underachiever...doing the same thing over and over and still so far from figuring out how to do it right....

London Book Fair (April 20 - April 22)

Contemporary Indian Writing

It's spring time, folks, and the London Book Fair is there again! This year's theme: Contemporary Indian Writing. Which has astonishing lineage in modernism, says Amit Chaudhuri, the eminent writer.

What will London bring that Frankfurt and Paris haven't? Certainly, it seems to have taken the cue from the two European cities in at least one regard: it hasn't invited only those writers who are published in this country - that is, Anglophone writers of prose. So, for instance, we will have, besides Vikram Seth, Ramachandra Guha and Patrick French, the Urdu-language theorist Gopi Chand Narang, the Bengali poet and novelist Sunil Ganguly, and the English-language poet and novelist Mamang Dai from the idyllic, remote Arunachal Pradesh. In other words, the book fair should bring some intimation to audiences in London of an explosion in writing that is not 30 but perhaps 200 years old, the consequence of a venerable, many-tongued, and still astonishing lineage in modernism.

So, why is Arundhati Roy issuing a press statement this time?

When Arundhati Roy issues a press statement, you have to sit up and take notice. This time it's about Dr. Binayak Sen, the brilliant doctor who spent whole of his life working amongst the poor and underprivileged. Though his contribution to society has been recognised in india and abroad - even among the academics - he has been now languishing in jail for 22 months for a framed-up charge under a draconian law. Few have raised a voice against this State behaviour( Tehelka did a expose-all cover story without any impact on the administration or judiciary). Even in this election time, no political party spares a word about the good doctor's stay in jail without any hint of justice. Under the circumstaces, who can you look to except Arundhati Roy who really can, in an amazingly free and fearless way, speak out against any kind of atrocity perpetrated on an individual, a community or a race by the powers-that-be anywhere in the globe?

The press statement:

Dr Binayak Sen has been in prison for 22 months, arrested under one of India's most draconian laws, the Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act. This Act has such a vague, diffused definition of 'Unlawful Activity' that it renders every person guilty unless he or she can prove their innocence. Dr Sen's bail application was dismissed twice, both times at the very outset, by the High Court of Chattisgarh and by the Supreme Court of India. On neither occasion was there a discussion on the merits of the case. On the 2nd of December 2008 the High Court of Chattisgarh once again turned down his bail application, without a discussion on the merits of the case, saying that there had been no change in circumstances.

more..

Why Roberto Bolano Now?

Because once again, literature in the West seems to have grown complacent: it isn't so much written as manufactured. The genres dictated by mainstream publishing are suffocating. We're in need of a prophet - or an enfant terrible - to wake us from our slumber.

The enlightened world of Pico Iyer

Writer of Global Life of Individual

I write because I have to. All I have learnt in life is to read and write. And as I read and write more, I move further and further away from making a living.

In the April issue of The Hindu: Literary Review, Ziya Us Salam has an interesting article on Pico Iyer.

Another Charlotte Roche interview

It's not that I like Charlotte Roche's work anyway. In fact, from reading of extracts from her controversial novel Wetlands, I understand she's no real writer by any means. But then she is honest and outspoken in an obsessive silly-funny way. So, another interview here, in which she says:

And it is not allowed for me as a young feminist to say that women are masochistic. I am and all my female friends are. We stand in front of the mirror, we are naked, and we feel ugly as fuck. We see everything as wrong. We try and fight our body to become prettier and work on it. It's not at all free and self-confident. I don't want it to be like that, but I see that it is

IMPAC Dublin literary award 2009 shortlist

The IMPAC Dublin literary award 2009 shortlist, just announced, has eight finalists:

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz

2. Ravel by Jean Echenoz, translated from the original French by LInda Coverdale

3. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

4. The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland

5. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen, translated from the original Norwegian by Don Shaw and Don Bartlett

6. The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

7. Animal’s People by Indra Sinha

8. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas

Is writing now timid?

“Nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses, let alone publish it. Writing is now timid because writers are now terrified.”

The novelist Hanif Kureishi, a friend of Rushdie’s since before the fatwa, has a new take about the impact of the campaign against The Satanic Verses

Milan Kundera is 80 today.

Milan Kundera is eighty today. Yes, he was born on April 1, all fools' day.

Is there any one out there who knows how the great writer is - after the crushing, made-up controversy which must have taken a heavy toll of his old age?

Has he written any novel after Ignorance?

Do people still love high seriousness and low humour of his novels?

Is Kundera fading away in this intellectually downtime?

Hottest literary event of the season

Jonathon Littell's The Kindly Ones

The Kindely Ones is a holocaust novel by an American who wrote the book in French. In French alone it has sold more than 800,000 copies and walked off with the Prix Goncourt and Grand Prix du Roman. Spanish writer Jorge Semprun, who was on the Goncourt jury, described it as “the literary event of the half-century.” It has been praised for its breadth and grasp of the events of the Second World War.

A 975 pages of dense text, often with a single paragraph forming a veritable wall of type that extends over several pages. Jonathon Littell, the writer, wanted it this way: “The text must consist of great blocks, blocks that are suffocating to the reader, who must not be able to get through them too easily.”

But as one critic puts it: The Kindly Ones,” is a nearly bottomless cocktail of gleefully pornographic violence and philosophical rumination.

Mahasweta Devi in Man Booker International Prize longlist

I'm so happy Mahasweta Devi, eminent Bengali writer and activist, has figured in the Man Booker International Prize longlist.

Mahasweta is one of Bengal's few respected writers with a long record of writing about the poor and repressed section of Indian society in a vibrant way. Whether it is the Naxalite movement in late 60's or the recent uprising in Nandigram, she has already explored it, and her oeuvre has had some protagonist, some hapless mother whose only son was killed by the police, or a recently widowed woman whom the administration refused to hand over her husband's body, working up in her narrative. Her works are chronicle and history combined. They are current and epic at the same time.

Mahasweta's activism is another aspect to her persona. Few writers are so aware and knowledgeable about common man's problems as she is. She is especially concerned about the tribals' status in India, and has worked among them over years to uplift their abysmal condition. She travels widely even now (she's about eighty) and is constantly in touch with the victims of Indian society. To know how much she is involved with the humanity, you have to read her column in the Statesman (Bengali) published from Kolkata.

Mahasweta Devi has had to pay a heavy price for her anti-establishment and lack-of-political-correctness posture throughout her life. The Congress Government fired her from her job on the ground that she was a Marxist. But the subsequent Marxist Government - long since in power in Bengal - is not kind to her either for her outspokenness.

Mahasweta has thousands of admirers across the world. Her works have been translated in many languages. Many awards have already come her way, Magsaysay award being one of them. She is a serious contender for the Nobel Prize.

If the judges award her the Man Booker International Prize, they would do a service not only to a real writer, but also to the prize itself.

Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 longlist

Debra Adelaide The Household Guide to Dying

Gaynor Arnold Girl in a Blue Dress

Lissa Evans Their Finest Hour and a Half

Bernardine Evaristo Blonde Root

Ellen Feldman Scottsboro

Laura Fish Strange Music

V.V. Ganeshananthan Love Marria

Allegra Goodman Intuition

Samantha Harvey The Wildernes

Samantha Hunt The Invention of Everything Else

Michelle de Kretser The Lost Dog

Deirdre Madden Molly Fox’s Birthday

Toni Morrison A Mercy

Gina Ochsner The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight

Marilynne Robinson Home

Preeta Samarasan Evening is the Whole Day

Kamila Shamsie Burnt Shadows

Curtis Sittenfeld American Wife

Miriam Toews The Flying Troutmans

Ann Weisgarber The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

Charlotte Roche interview

German television presenter turned novelist Charlotte Roche, of Wetlands fame, is interviewed at Publishers' weekly. Roche courts controversy with the sexual and grooming habits of her 18-year-old protagonist, Helen Memel.

I had a contract for a book for seven years—so for seven years, I lived with a very bad conscience. But I didn't want to write a stupid TV book by a TV presenter. I realized that a good book had to be honest, something I knew about and something special to me. And I'm fascinated by sexual hygiene. I love talking about things I feel embarrassed about. I love talking about hemorrhoids at parties.

Daniel Mueenuddin's story review

I've not yet checked if Daniel Mueenuddin's debut story collection has hit my bookstore. But my good friend V. Ramaswamy has sent me by e-mail files of three stories included in the collection for my reading. And of these three stories, I chose A Spoiled Man to taste and test Mueenuddin's writing.

The story is about Rezak, an underdog, who was employed by the American wife of a Pakistani feudal lord, to look after their weekend home garden. Physically deformed, alone, away from his brothers, elderly he had a make-shift home, and made ends meet with some manual job which he didn't get so often. After employment, he had a good and regular pay-packet every month. So he went on to marry a mentally subnormal girl. Rezak took time and patience to tame the girl. But one day she ran away. While he was on a desperate search for his wife, he was taken to the police station by the police on the pretext that he sold away his wife. The police tortured him terribly, apparently to extract a confession. Finally, they set him free, and he returned to his job. He's now in a bad health but crazily got to buy costly marble for his tomb. Rezaq dies soon after.

It was indeed hard for me to believe that Rezak could be the topic of a short story in these times. Who is after all interested in "a small bowlegged man with a lopsided, battered face" in today's world? But Mueenuddin's narrative, though traditional, is gripping, and draws you in with his realistic details and observations. Obviously, he knows about these people intimately. And he knows about Pakistan, his country too. Mueenuddin writes effortlessly, and tells his story like he's chronicling something intently. It's an extra-ordinary tale of a very ordinary and tormented soul representative of any common man anywhere in the world.

Yes, a real writer has arrived at our literary scene after a long time. I'm going to buy his book In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

England launches Roberto Bolano publishing offensive

"Deep down, the question doesn't lie in the distinction between realist and fantastic but in language and structures, in ways of seeing."
Roberto Bolano.

So,England now launches its Roberto Bolano publishing offensive. Picador has recently acquired the rights to ten other titles, from the slim novellas with which Bolano began his fictional career to a full-length novel, The Third Reich, written in the 1990s.

Both The Savage Detectives and 2666, his two novels that have so far made it into English, combine vicious punk energy with a seemingly effortless capacity for beauty at the sentence level. But they're also gigantic shaggy-dog stories, crafty and self-delighting, ready at any minute to drift off from the main road into pastiche, reportage, politicking or poetry.

John Cheever biography review

Susan Cheever reviews the new biography of her father, "Cheever: A life".

A lot of what has been written about my father stresses his dark side. Yes, he was a difficult, alcoholic, closeted gay man who was sometimes mean to his family. What seems to have been lost with time is his extraordinary humor. History rewards reverent earnestness, while the jokes and pratfalls and wit are often lost in translation. Darkness survives; lightness is ephemeral.

Orhan Pamuk visits India

The Hindu, a venerable daily newspaper published from Madras, reports Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's visit to Mumbai on the front page.(thanks to V. Ramaswamy for the e-mail pointing to Hindu news).

Here are some quotes randomly taken from his conversation with the media at British Council.

"I don’t belong, I always felt the sense of otherness. I don’t think I feel at home in the West or in a non-Western country. I have the anxiety of belonging wherever I go and most of the writers I admire are like that."

"Living in the same place does not mean I am comfortable."

"I will never write a campus novel."

More..

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