A question of identity

Aatish Taseer's debut novel The Temple Goers talks about belonging, corruption, power, and more…

Just the author with his book on the stage, and a smattering of silent listeners. That was the scene at the launch of Aatish Taseer's debut novel The Temple Goers at Landmark, where for close to three-quarters of an hour, the author simply sat and read long, descriptive passages from his book.

No interaction or discussion on the themes of the novel with a Chennai personality. No chatty interludes by the author himself. Even the post-reading audience interaction was brief, with the author not really going out of his way to engage the admittedly sparse audience.

Relaxed reading
It made for a rather subdued event (unusually so for a Landmark reading). But what it did do — and one might argue this is after all the point of any book reading — is give that small group of listeners a clear feel for the prose itself — emotional, and vividly evocative of the many facets of Delhi. The relaxed reading of unbroken segments from the novel allowed one to get under the skin of The Temple Goers, feeling the narrator's urgency, for instance, as he searches for the old poet, Zafar Moradabadi, and seeing Old Delhi — in all its decaying magnificence — come alive through his eyes.

Full report here Hindu