There are three kinds of fiction that Indian writers can’t write: good crime thrillers, good romance (adult kind, in which sex is not “lofty breasts” and “stars in the sky”) and fiction for young adults. So that leaves us readers with literary fiction, pulp fiction and of course, the ubiquitous campus novel. By the way, a really cool crime title which Hachette India is publishing is by Lounge columnist, the more Bangalorean-and-less-Swedish writer Zac O’Yeah. His book ‘Scandanavistan’ is a spy thriller set in a futuristic Europe colonized by India!
When I last visited my favourite bookstore Landmark (finally, Landmark opens this side of town, in Lower Parel), Martin Amis, Susan Sontag and Vikram Seth sat alongside each other in the literary fiction shelves. The new releases section had a dizzying variety of books. There was no separate section for cime, but in popular fiction, there was Swedish fiction, Raymond Chandler and John Le Carre. The only Indian authors here was Kalpish Ratna—they never got to me although their crime stories are soaked in very local Bombay flavours.
There was no category for young adults. In the children’s books section, there was the phenomenally successful ‘Twilight’ series and the usual sci-fi and fantasy titles. What do teenagers and young adults who don’t like sci-fi or fantasy or love stories revolving handsome vampires, read?
Full report here Mint
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