New Writers, New Finds

One of the better ways of learning about new writers and books that you haven’t read is to read what other writers say about the books they have read and the writers they liked. A couple of weeks ago I had picked up the June issue of ‘First City’ that had ‘Writer’s Special’ emblazoned on the bright yellow cover. I am now glad I bought it. Inside were more than half a dozen pages of articles by famous writers on their favorite writers and their books. I came across a number of writers and books I haven’t even heard before. It was a sort of bonanza and I was really glad that the forty bucks I spent on the magazine was worth it. There was one of my favorite writers, Pico Iyer, talking about his favorite writer, Graham Greene apart from pieces by Anjum Hasan, Amitava Kumar, Allan Sealy, Shashi Deshpande and others on their favorite writers.

In Amitava Kumar’s piece on Suketu Mehta I read that he (Amitava K) was writing a book on non-fiction writing. Now that is something to look forward to. A couple of years ago he had done an article in The Hindu about how he came to write ‘Home Products.’ It was a pretty educative article and I remember cutting it and keeping it aside in my scrap book. It seems ‘Maximum City’ grew out of an article on Bhopal Suketu Mehta did for Granta whose editor Ian Jack gave him the advance to write the book.

In her illuminating piece on Vladimir Nobokov, Anjum Hasan wrote something about the ‘idiom of irony’ as compared to the ‘idiom of loss’ which made me look at books in a different perspective. She also wrote the reason why Nabokov’s novels give her sustained pleasure which is that they represent a literary ideal- to write as if every thing counts. I remember reading that somewhere- to write as if every thing counts. Anyway, I have Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Speak Memory’ which is his autobiography still unread. I also haven’t yet picked up Anjum Hasan’s ‘Lunatic in My Head’ though it’s been out for months. I also read she is coming out with her next novel, “Neti, Neti’ which will be out this October.

Sometime back I had picked up a book by the travel writer Ryscard Kapuscinski and there was Lloyd Jones writing about him in First City. I learnt that Kapuscinski’s fans include John Updike, Salman Rushdie and surprise, surprise, Gabriel Garcia Marquez! I still haven’t opened Kapuscinski’s book to read but after learning about the sort of fans he has then I guess I have to begin reading it soon. I was also very surprised to read that Kapuscinski had been to apna Hyderabad!! So many people have visited our city and we still haven’t learned to drive properly.

I also came across new writers and their books that I must now begin to look for. There was John McGahern’s ‘That They May Face the Rising Sun’ which Jon McGregor (who wrote the piece) considered as one of the greatest late 20th Century novels of the English language. I wonder why I haven’t heard of this book before.

Then there was another book I have to find and read as soon as I lay my hands on it. It is Philip Roth’s ‘Shop Talk’ which it seems is a collection of his essays and interviews with other writers. I wonder if I will come across it in Abids or any of the second hand bookstores here in Hyderabad.