The next big thing?

She has reportedly bagged the highest ever advance from an Indian publisher for a debut novel. Her literary agent, David Godwin, is the same man who represented Booker prize winners Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. Sarita Mandana, an MBA graduate, is already being hailed as the ‘next-big-thing’. We caught up with Mandana while she was in town to promote her novel, Tiger Hills.

Some critics are calling your novel India’s Gone with the Wind. Given how enduring an institution Gone with the Wind has proved to be, I’ll take that as a compliment. In all seriousness though, the two are different in content. What people might be reacting to when they make the comparison are — a period setting (Tiger Hills begins in 1878), central female protagonists (Devi is wilful and headstrong) and a deep rootedness to place (Tiger Hills is set in Coorg).

Your journey from being an MBA graduate to a novelist is fascinating. I graduated from IIM Bangalore, followed that with an MBA from Wharton, and have been working in a private equity firm in New York. There came a time where I’ve had a particularly stressful weeks at work.

Itching for a creative outlet, I booted up the laptop one night, and began to write. That first output became a short story; I wrote six more and tentatively, began to show them around. “Write a novel,” I was told. So, I did. Five sleep-deprived years later, I was ready with Tiger Hills.

Full report here Hindustan Times