'Damn' hard to write on sexual pleasure: Taseer

CNN-IBN's Amrita Tripathi interviews Aatish Taseer on everything from the IPL saga to the new India, to his debut novel, The Temple-Goers, and writing about sex.

I feel this is a brave book. At any point were you worried about a backlash? Because of course, people are going to read it wondering who it is you’re talking about?
Yes, but what you speak of, if it occurs at all, is necessarily restricted to a very small sphere, and can last only for a limited period of time. I’ve just come back from a nation-wide book tour and no one in Calcutta, for instance, thought they recognized anyone. What people forget, when they make these Delhi assumptions and talk of a roman à clef, is that many well-known works of the 19th and 20th century were read that way when they first came out. Take Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past; that, despite all the big themes in the background, was, when it first appeared in Paris, in the early part of the last century, read as a roman à clef. And it’s impossible to believe that now. So if there is a ‘backlash’, it can only really be a backlash in a teacup.

Full interview here CNN IBN