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Book News Trading in secrets
Akbar’s Jodha merely a fantasy? Ask Rushdie
All set for Jaipur Literary Fest
Rushdie’s new novel
Writers defy bombs to rendezvous in Sri Lanka Ignoring the bombs going off in the vicinity, leading lights of English literature from across the globe are meeting in the quaint Dutch-built city of Galle in south Sri Lanka for a four-day bonanza of lectures, readings, panel discussions and book launches. Panchatantra inspires Virgin Comics series Move over Archies, Vishnu Sharma is here. Virgin Comics was launched in North America recently with a new comic book series inspired by India's ancient Panchatantra fables.
Novelist and essayist Amitav Ghosh is working on an ambitious trilogy of novels spanning three continents and two centuries. In a literary coup of sorts, Penguin India has netted Ghosh’s new trilogy. Sea of Poppies, the first novel in ‘The Ibis Trilogy,” will be out next year. It will also be translated into Hindi, Malayalam and Marathi.
Pioneer of ‘New Story’ in Hindi dead Writer Kamleshwar, a man of many parts, passed away last month, after inseminating Hindi with his unique sensibility and life-long fanatical devotion to the craft of words. The man who reinvented the genre of short story and created a new prose idiom is going to be missed by those who care for the richness and depth of the Hindi literature. Goodbye, Sidney Sheldon
Hi, I am Art and I am dead
So huge was his fan following and the appeal of his short satirical sketches that Buchwald’s columns and writings found prized place in more than 500 newspapers worldwide.
Seamus Heaney bags Eliot prize The Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney won the 2006 T.S. Eliot prize with his latest work called District and Circle. The collection of poems by Heaney beat other distinguished poets like Hugo Williams, Tim Liardet and Simon Armitage among others. Heaney received a prize of 10,000 pounds presented by Valerie Eliot, widow of TS Eliot. Heaney was unable to receive the award in person as he was recuperating from an illness.
Book Critics Circle nominees announced The National Book Critics Circle has announced finalists for its 33rd Annual prize. Each year, the NBCC awards prize to the best book in six categories namely fiction, general nonfiction, biography, autobiography/memoir and criticism. Kiran Desai's Man Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Richard Ford's Lay of the Land are some of the books nominated in the fiction category. Dave Eggars's What is What and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun were also selected in the same category.
A toast to India's Last Mughal Emperor
Eric Newby dies
Dylan Thomas Award declared A new Literary Award based on the name and 'craft or sullen art' of Dylan Thomas was announced on the October 27, naming Rachel Trezise as its first winner. The award is based on originality and is restricted to work by writers under the age of 30. Rachel Trezise, from South Wales, won the award of £60,000 for her novel of short stories, Fresh Apples. The chairman of the judges, TV scriptwriter Andrew Davies said that Trezise's highly original work can 'be easily compared to James Joyce's Dubliners.' She is also the winner of the Orange Futures Award. The other short listed candidates for the award were: James Scudamore's The Amnesia Clinic; Lucy Caldwell's Where They Were Missed; Liza Ward's Outside Valentine; Nick Laird's Utterly Monkey; and Ian Holding's Unfeeling.
Former German Chancellor Schroder’s Memoirs
Kiran Desai creates Booker hullabaloo By Manish Chand One is not sure what Kiran Desai would make out of all this hullabaloo over her Booker short-listed novel The Inheritance of Loss, but if all goes well, she would become the second Indian to win the 50,000-pound literary trophy that eluded her more famous novelist mother Anita Desai thrice. If she makes the grade -- the Man Booker Prize will be announced at Guildhall in London Oct 10 -- Desai, a recluse by temperament, will be instantly catapulted into the exalted realm of literary stardom that bestows its favours only on a chosen few. more
Spirituality Sells India's prowess in IT may be making international headlines, but back home it is the good old Indian spirituality that is keeping cash registers ringing at the ongoing Delhi Book Fair. More and more Indians, especially the youth and the upwardly mobile, are rediscovering spiritual classics like "The Bhagvad Gita" and epics like "The Ramayana" and "The Mahabharata". more Nine Days of Feast for Book Lovers
Nine days of feast for book lovers begin in the Indian capital Sept 16. Over 300 publishers from India and abroad, including top-billing online booksellers, Google and A1Books.com, will showcase their latest offerings at the Delhi Book Fair. The 12th edition of the fair will also see foreign buyers from countries such as Britain, Mauritius, Malaysia and Uganda for the first time in its history, underscoring India?s growing reputation as an emerging knowledge power and a hub for top quality publishing. more
It was an evening teeming with secrets of the past, celebrating the life and times of a Sufi spy princess who fought for the British and died at the hands of the Gestapo during World War II. Full Details Here Vikas Swarup wins 2006 Boeke Prize
It seems to be the season of literary glory for Indian authors writing in English. Diplomat-author Vikas Swarup has won Exclusive Books' 2006 Boeke Prize for his "unputdownable" novel, Q&A (published by Random House). Swarup's debut novel Q and A is a moving story of how a penniless waiter from Mumbai wins a fortune on a popular television quiz show, Who Will Win A Billion? Critically acclaimed in India and abroad, this best-selling novel dissects popular clich's about celebrity and stardom and takes readers on a roller-caoster ride through the vagaries of fortune in the life of an anonymous Indian. Q and A is being translated into 30 languages, and is due to be made both into a film (rights have been acquired by Film Four) and a stage musical. Swarup collected a framed picture of his book jacket at the gala Boeke Awards ceremony held at a Sandton Exclusive Books bookstore in Johannesburg early this month.
Harper Lee confesses it all...
The Catastrophe of Harry Potter In a rare T.V. interview, J.K. Rowling declared that two of her “much loved” characters will die in the concluding book in the Harry Potter series. In her interview, she said that she had slightly modified the concluding chapter, which she originally wrote in 1990. The reason for such an act that has shocked many young fans is, as Rowling says, the price to be paid while dealing with “pure evil.” Rowling has also recieved an honorary degree for her contribution to multiple sclerosis research from Aberdeen University. Rowling had contributed financially to the institute after the passing away of her mother.
British libraries on a makeover spree The British libraries are undergoing fancy makeovers just to keep themselves afloat in this pervasive culture of philistinism. Alarmed by a sharp decline in book borrowings and visits, the libraries have gone on a feel-goof, look-good charming offensive. Twenty-one of the country's libraries have already closed and 67 are under review. The makeovers with installation of new doors, Network terminals, laptop zones have revamped the look of the libraries, making them more modern and accessible than the drowsy Victorian look they had.
Big Prize for 'The Master' Irish author Colm Toibin's ‘The Master won the world’s richest literary award - the 68,000-pounds International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Toibin said he was trying to create a work that could be enjoyed “even if you hadn't read a word of Henry James.” The Master is a fictional transmutation of James’ life as he emerged from obscurity to become a canonical author. The IMPAC judges that included the Scottish author Andrew O' Hagan liked the book for its detail of the “beautiful exposure of loss and the price of pursuit of perfection.”
Utterly Monkey bags the Trask Award. After Zadie Smith's third fictional novel 'On Beauty' won the Orange Prize for Fiction, her husband Nick Laird's 'lad-lit' debut work Utterly Monkey struck gold with the Betty Trask award, given usually for romantic fiction. Publishers Weekly consider the novel to be “well intentioned, clever and occasionally quirky.” The Trask award of 10,000 pounds was announced at the Society of Authors awards in London. Laird's fiction about the disillusioned Irish lawyer has also won him the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
Big Prize for 'The Master' Irish author Colm Toibin's ‘The Master won the world’s richest literary award - the 68,000-pounds International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Toibin said he was trying to create a work that could be enjoyed “even if you hadn't read a word of Henry James.” The Master is a fictional transmutation of James’ life as he emerged from obscurity to become a canonical author. The IMPAC judges that included the Scottish author Andrew O' Hagan liked the book for its detail of the “beautiful exposure of loss and the price of pursuit of perfection.”
Shakespeare the all-time winner! '1599-A Year in the life of William Shakespeare' beat other highly prestigious covers to win the Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize. The author James Shapiro describes it as a 'partial' biography of the enigmatic playwright. The year 1599 was a defining year in the life of the bard that saw him write all-time classics like like Hamlet, Julius Caesar, As You Like It. Shapiro's work deliberately avoids Shakespeare's personal life and attempts to highlight the politics of the time that had impinged on his work. The quality of Shapiro's work is both academic and accessible, which is why he won the award.
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Playwright, screenwriter, novelist and film-maker Hanif Kureishi is a connoissieur of inner secrets and an astute excavator of people’s hidden desires and their deepest fears. “Something to Tell You,” (published by Faber) – Kureishi’s new novel about a Freudian analyst struggling with a guilty secret – illuminates his talent for deciphering inner speech, of bringing the unsaid into the open. 
Only Salman Raushdie, the maestro of magic realism, can conjure up such fantasies that effortlessly merge and collide with history. In his exquisitely ambivalent short story The Shelter of the World, published in The New Yorker, Rushdie plays with the idea that Emperor Akbar's Hindu wife Jodhabai was merely a figment of the imagination. She was a dream of the all-powerful emperor, prone to visionary levitations that one rarely sees in potentates, Rushdie suggests in his story. 
Literati, illuminati, glitterati and chatterati are bracing to preen and strut at the third edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival (Jan 21-27) in the colourful capital of India’s eastern state Rajasthan, known mostly for magnificent palaces and an unquenchable nostalgia for the Indian royalty. 
The long wait appears to be over. Salman Rushdie’s new novel, 'The Enchantress of Florence', a historical novel that flits back and forth between Renaissance Florence and the 16th century Mughal Empire in India, will be published this summer. 
Amitav Ghosh readers, rejoice
"Hi, I'm Art Buchwald and I just died," the Pulitzer Prize-winning American political satirist and author of more than 30 books announced the news with a grin on a video posted on The New York Times website long time ago. The fantasized death, however, came to Art Buchwald, humorist and columnist for the Washington Post, only recently at the age of 81.
India's last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II may have penned melancholic verses about not getting two yards of land for his burial, but the launch of a book on Zafar has resurrected the poet-king and his brilliant court in all its colours, ranging from the glorious to the tragic.
Nearly one hundred fifty years after his death in exile in Rangoon (now called Yangon), Zafar, the emperor who preferred writing sad mystical poems to the rigours of statecraft, was toasted with ghazals, sufi singing and spirited drinking at the launch of William Dalrymple's The Last Mughal (published by Penguin/Viking) in India?s capital Tuesday evening (Oct 31). 
Eric Newby, the author of the A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush,
passed away on October 23. He was 86. A Short Walk is his account
of his expedition to the Mir Samir in the Nuristan Mountains of
Afghanistan. The book was published in 1958 and inspired many to
travel to the country. Evelyn Waugh wrote a preface to the book
and it also includes an appearance by Wilfred Thesiger. Newby was
also The Observer's travel editor from 1963 to 1973. His experiences
in the Second World War as a part of Black Watch and Special Boat
Section are described in his memoirs Love and War in the Appennines
which was made in a movie in 2001. Newby also received the Lifetime
Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers in 2001.
Germany's former chancellor Gerhard Schroder's new book is ready
for release and along with it are all the controversies surrounding
Schroder's seven years in office. His memoirs Decisions: My Life
in Politics was released in Germany this week. Schroder returns
back into the limelight with this book, which also contains an
attack on his successor, Angela Merkel, who he believes is 'lacking
in leadership' and US President George Bush. Even though the 544-page
book is not as revelatory as historians and critics had hoped,
it tries to shed an encouraging light on the otherwise dull and
staid political seven year season of his rule. "This seems
to have been a sort of therapy for Schröder," commented
the newspaper Die Welt about the book.
Revisiting Spy Princess, World War II heroine
Harper Lee, winner of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic 'To Kill A Mocking Bird', who had stopped giving interviews about forty years ago, writes in the summer issue of O, Oprah Magazine, about her love and life of books. She talks about growing up in the Depression-era United States, and in the present-day “abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, i pods and minds like empty rooms'.” But the culture of promiscuous abundance hasn’t dented in the least her fanatical loyalty to books. She remains delightfully old-fashioned in her love for the good old pen and paper.
I can't go on, says Beckett's Unnamable. I will go on. A writer's injuries are his strengths, and from his wounds will flow his sweetest, most startling dreams.
And Proust, too, killing himself to write his book comes close to the concept of dharma when, echoing Balzac, he says that in the end it's less the desire for fame than 'the habit of laboriousness' that takes a writer to the end of a work. But dharma, as this ideal of truth to oneself, or living out the truth in oneself, can also be used to reconcile men to servitude and make them find in paralyzing obedience the highest spiritual good. 'And do thy duty, even if it be humble,' says the Aryan Gita,
'rather than another's, even it be great. To die on one's duty is life: to live in another' death.
My discovery over the years is that the mother tongues have so much in them, so much that is alive, and are much more pervasive, in all strata of society, in all ages from children to the very old, men and women, literate and non-literate. What holds them together? It's not Sanskrit. It's these mother tongues. I think I went into linguistics because of that. That spoken languages had to be very, very important. It was important in my youth to have discovered this.
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking. We are talking now about the earliest writing I did and about the power of language to counteract the wallow of late adolescence, to define things, define muddled expression in economical ways. Let's not forget that writing is convenient. It requires the simplest tools. A young writer sees that with words and sentences on a piece of paper that costs less than a penny he can place himself more clearly in the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by daemons. He doesn’t know why they chose him and he is usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
I am trembling with cold