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. 

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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.

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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

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Chinua Achebe on literature and ethnicity