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| Increasing interest in Indian writing | | India tops the bill at world's largest book fair | |
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, SEPT. 28: Come October 4, around 70 writers are expected to make an appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair. These writers also include big names such as Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra and Shashi Tharoor. Tharoor is in the race for the top job at the United Nations, in place of present Secretary-General. Kofi Annan.
Tales from underworld gang wars and racy fare about a small-town girl in the big, bad world of Bollywood will be on show next week as India takes top billing at the world’s largest book fair. India was invited as guest of honour to the five-day event starting October 4, with organisers saying they wanted to bring contemporary India to a wider international audience.
The special presence at Frankfurt is seen as an acknowledgement of an increasing interest in Indian writing and more broadly in its culture as the country’s profile rises, thanks to its booming economy. Publishers have compared the renewed interest in Indian English writing to a similar wave nearly a decade ago when Booker prize winner, Arundhati Roy, made a splash with her debut novel “The God of Small Things.”
“Indian writing is no longer considered exotica. It is now mainstream in the UK and the US,” says Thomas Abraham, CEO of Penguin India, the country’s largest general interest book publisher. This year, the 45-year-old Chandra — whose 900-page novel ”Sacred Games” has been hailed as the biggest thing in literary circles here — reportedly took a million-dollar advance from US publishers Harper Collins.
Chandra is one of the most celebrated among a generation of young India writers increasingly winning international acclaim. Others include Amitav Ghosh, Amit Chaudhuri and British-born Rana Dasgupta whose debut novel “Tokyo, Cancelled” earned lavish praise last year. “Sacred Games”, a crime thriller set in Mumbai city’s underworld, and “Tokyo Cancelled” — about 13 Tokyo-bound passengers stranded at an airport — are among the 55 books by Indians to be translated into European languages for the event.
In a sign of the times, international publisher Random House set up shop in India last year. Penguin India ventured into publishing in Hindi and Marathi languages and plans to introduce more of the nearly two-dozen India’s official languages with an eye on the expanding market for regional literature.
Book publishing in India is estimated to generate 685 million dollars a year, according to the government-run publisher National Book Trust. With an annual 28,000 titles, India publishes the world’s largest number of English books after the US and Britain. Industry watchers, however, said that India would take several years to catch up with Western countries in terms of both the variety of literature and the sales.
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