In 2008, the plot thickens

Whether showcased in large print, humming in soft verse or sitting tightly bound on snooty shelves, Indian words are poised to travel widely in 2008. The forecast for books is upbeat — literary agencies at last, publishers proliferating by the minute, professionally planned jackets, storytellers hitting the spot bang-on, genres unlimited… Is there a twist in the tale? Only 2009 will tell. Meanwhile, banker-cum-author Chetan Bhagat readies for the sweepstakes once again, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni dwells on desi spells, and Pulitzer-winner Jhumpa Lahiri spins more stories in the new year. So fasten your seatbelts, bookworms, and prepare to vroom around the world while cuddling up with bestsellers this holiday season and beyond.

Of late, the looks of books have been getting better and better, with even mediocre works offset by beauty-parloured covers. Breakthrough technical savvy in production has shooed out the assembly-line look, bringing the bling back to coffee-table books, which, like page-three socialites, were beginning to appear boringly same. Blurbs, too, now cut to the chase with less blubber, more kick-ass copy. As HarperCollins chief editor VK Karthika puts it, the year ahead is “exciting”!

Despite cyber substitutes, online reads and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing’s warning that the Internet has “seduced a whole generation into its inanities”, books are not into birth-control yet, thank god! From gift-wrapped sermons to casting showbiz celebs in a new light and plucking the yuk factor from taboo topics, the books of the future are leaving no page unturned when it comes to genres.

Kapish Mehra of Rupa and Company sees a broadening of reader base. “I don’t have a crystal ball, but Year 2008 will see a bit of everything. The question is where is the Indian reader going? What is his mind pattern, taste? The target audience is changing, maturing. The increase in retailing means more books of all types.”

Against this potpourri prediction is the notion that the literary muse may even be homeward-bound. Says Chetan Bhagat, whose new book is scheduled for summertime, “The trend of homegrown literature will continue to grow. Hope some good non-fiction also comes out domestically.”

Nilanjana S Roy, literary critic and chief editor of EastWest and Westland Books, says: “I think you’ll see a demand for more food writing and cookbooks, for more graphic novels, and for more works that deal directly with Indian history and biography. With so many of us in publishing now, our trade list — the more commercial books — should also become more ‘Indian’ and less ‘imported’. For example, we should have more indigenous yoga books, rather than imports from elsewhere.”

Agrees Bollywood Roulette author Rahul Bajaj, “I think the defining trend of 2008 is going to be accessibility, an acceleration of the process of Indification of English language Indian literature. It is breaking out of a mould — like Indian cinema did over a hundred years ago — when it switched from foreign themes to Indian themes and look where that evolution has brought Bollywood. Pioneering this trend are going to be innovative, small, nimble home-grown publishers who are not scared to take a chance and challenge the big, established players. Democratisation at the hands of market forces is going to be the theme of 2008.”

If going indigenous is the new mantra, then can homogenisation be far behind as literary themes begin to crisscross the atlas? The Random House palette can’t get more global, with AIDS awareness and LTTE child soldiers in the field of fiction even as Sage gives gays a voice with Parmesh Shahani’s Gay Bombay and R Raj Rao and Dibyajyoti Sarma’s Whistling In The Dark: 20 Queer Interviews. Smita Jain’s Kkrishnaa’s Konfessions (Westland’s Tranquebar imprint) is all chick-lit fun while Indira Jaisingh’s Marital Rape (Sage) goes into grim realities.

The Fiction files
Even as Bhagat’s book (Rupa), Abhijit Bhaduri’s Married But Available and Karan Bajaj’s Keep Off The Grass (HarperCollins) are being touted as bestsellers in the making, other books are vying for the top spot.

Penguin India has biggies like Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, Bombay Tiger by Kamala Markandaya and Lost Flamingoes Of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi lined up. Penguin imports, Age Of Shiva by Manil Suri, Something To Tell You by Hanif Kureishi, and The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam are also all set to rock readers.

Picador manager (sales) Rajdeep Mukherjee lists forthcoming blockbusters from Pan Macmillan in 2008 as The Palace Of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, An Atlas Of  Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy and Escape by Manjula Padmanabhan.

While The Palace Of Illusions harks back to the time of the Mahabharat, Escape explores a mythical men-only land and the dangers of female foeticide. Tarun Tejpal returns with The Story Of My Assassins (HarperCollins), which “is built around the story of a journalist who becomes the focus of attention — of the government, the media, the income tax department and the cops for his anti-establishment views”.  If Tony D’Souza chases the immigrant dream in The Konkans, Mahua Maji depicts the rise of Bangladesh in Me Borishailla (Rupa). Katha is readying four novels by Krishna Sobti in translation.

Roli, meanwhile, has Boots, Belts, Berets by Tanushree Poddar, Freedom’s Ransom by John Hood and Simians Of The South Block by Ranjit Lal up its sleeve.

Short fiction
Expecting readers’ attention span to shrink further, publishers are tossing short fiction into tasty salads with catchy titles and trendy themes. HarperCollins will unveil The Japanese Wife by Kunal Basu — the first collection of stories by the author of The Opium Clerk and The Miniaturist. The book and the film based on it — by Aparna Sen — will release in January.

Random House (India) editor-in-chief Chiki Sarkar vouches: “Jhumpa Lahiri’s brilliant new short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, to my mind, is the best she has written yet.” The book is set to hit the stands in July. “For AIDS Sutra, we sent out about 15 writers to cover one human story related to AIDS in India — from trans-genders to truckers, housewives who have picked up the disease from their husbands to drug injected teenagers,” she added.

Authors included in the anthology are Salman Rushdie, Kiran Desai, Amit Chaudhuri, Shobhaa De, and CS Lakshmi, as well as younger writers like Sonia Falerio, Siddharth Deb and Nikita Lalwani.

Non-fiction
The non-fiction bouquet from Picador includes The Ballad Of Abu Ghraib by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris, about the notorious prison camp in Iraq. Waiting in the wings are also The Blackberry: From Cult Object To Cultural Revolution by Rod McQueen and a biography of celebrated author VS Naipaul, The World Is What It Is: VS Naipaul, The Authorised Biography by Patrick French.

Rupa’s Sugar In Milk by Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy is a collection of twelve in-depth profiles of some of the greatest Parsis in India while Nandan Nilekani makes motherland his muse in Imagining India (Penguin).

Hot off Sage’s press are Hirnamay Karlekar’s Stray Dogs And Savage Humans: A Study of Aggression and Steve Derne’s Globalisation On The Ground: New Media And The Transformation Of Culture, Class And Gender In India. Anita Nair will soon bid us Goodnight, God Bless, rounding off this list with essays on life and literature via Penguin.

Poetry
Indian poets can pause here for a musical laugh as publishers wade through verse like never before.

Jeet Thayil, whose anthology, 60 Indian Poets,will be published by Penguin India in April, sees “India establishing a genuine tradition in poetry publishing, despite the usual protestations to the contrary”. Penguin will also publish Eunice de Souza’s collected poems and Tranquebar, two books, Thayil’s These Errors Are Correct and Daljit Nagra’s Look We Have Coming to Dover!

Thayil says: “It’s a good time for poetry publishing in India going by the number of interesting titles that will appear next year.”
Pictorial picks

Bikash D Niyogi, managing director of Niyogi Books, believes pictorial biographies will do well in the market. While Niyogi has The Immortal Dialogue Of Mother India by Nasreen Munni Kabir and books on Nirad C Chaudhuri and Zohra Sehgal in the green room, Raghu Rai will paint his Reflections In Colour (Penguin) next year.

Roli will hawk Agra by Lucy Peck, Tamil Nadu by Latha Ananthraman (with photos by V Muthuraman) and Royal Rajasthan by Kishore Singh.
Spirituality

While last year’s Gandhigiri rush has dwindled to The Coming Of Gandhi by Mushirul Hasan (Niyogi) and The Hindu Communal Project: RSS, School Education And The Murder Of Mahatma Gandhi by Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan (Sage), spiritualism does see a surge.
There are The Geometry Of God (fiction, Rupa) by Uzma Aslam Khan and Heaven On Earth by Pepita Seth (pictorial, Niyogi), a detailed account of Kerala’s Guruvayur Temple.

Random House catalogues Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander, “about god, believing, orthodoxy, faith, family, community and rebellion” — against Sage’s Strong Religion And Zealous Media: Christian Fundamentalism And Communication In India by Pradip Ninan Thomas.

Filmmaker Saeed Mirza’s missive, Ammi: Letter To A Democratic Mother (Tranquebar) is an “exploration of the way Islam is viewed today”. Says Roy, “We’ll be launching the Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul series early next year. These are inspirational stories from ordinary people and celebrities, specifically geared for the Indian reader.”

Politics
Former president APJ Abdul Kalam will play a double role with a book on him and by him, courtesy HarperCollins. While The Family And The Nation by Kalam and Acharya Mahapragya emphasises the primary importance of family as the basic social unit, Five Years With Kalam by his secretary PM Nair is “an inside account of the most popular presidency India has ever known”.

Also from HarperCollins is Amazing Democracy by TS Krishnamurthy, former Chief Election Commissioner, observing “the workings of the Indian democracy at close quarters in every conceivable situation and permutation”.

Conflict And Diplomacy (Rupa) by Jaswant Singh and SP Bhatia delineates how East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

New kids on the block
The White Tiger (HarperCollins) is a first novel by Time correspondent Aravind Adiga, described as “an ironic take on the new India with its techno-brilliance and IT prowess”. The Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan, another novel from the house of HarperCollins, has cricket for a context.

According to Sarkar, “Two debuts I am really excited about are Basharat Peer and A Case Of Exploding Mangoes. One is a young journalist’s scorching book on Kashmir. Part memoir, part reportage, it tells the human stories behind the last 20 years of violence in the region. The other is a black, utterly gripping novel about the last days of General Zia written by BBC Urdu bureau head Mohammed Hanif.”