Another Sunday Super Haul

Nothing like it happened before in the two and half decades of my book buying experience. Friday last I read somewhere online about a new Scandinavian crime writer called Jo Nesbo tipped to be the next Stieg Larrson. The writer of the article was fulsome in his (or her, I don’t remember) praise of Nesbo’s writing especially his character, Inspector Harry Hole. Only the name Jo Nesbo had registered in my mind and that was it. To be honest I never expected even in my dreams about finding any Jo Nesbo title anywhere in Hyderabad much less at Abids. But on Sunday I got one of the most pleasant shocks of my book hunting life when I spotted Jo Nesbo’s absolutely latest title. More about that later.

But before I got to Abids I had stopped at Chikkadpally to check if Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ that I had not picked up the Sunday before was still lying around. It was, and I snapped it up for eighty rupees. I stopped at another seller on the other side of the road and saw another book I simply couldn’t resist buying. Standing out starkly among the faded covers of other old books was an absolutely new copy of VS Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas.’ I haven’t read it so far because I did not possess a copy of the book. Since I was actually waiting for ages to find a good copy I bought it though I had to pay quite a bit for it. It is more than six hundred pages long and I plan to read it on a long holiday if I ever get lucky enough to afford one.


Two hundred rupees on just two books, (eighty for Atul Gawande’s ‘Complications’ and a hundred and twenty rupees for ‘A House for Mr Biswas’) was too high for my second hand book buying persona. I did not want to spend any more on books or anything for that matter till the next Sunday. I thought I was pretty firm about that decision but when I saw Jo Nesbo’s ‘The Leopard’ I forgot all about my resolve. It took a while for the fact to sink in that an absolutely bestselling and latest title by an exciting new writer I had read about only two days back would be on the pavements of Abids less than a year after publication. I don’t know how the book got here but there’s something scribbled on the cover in ink that might offer a clue. Whatever, finding the book made me feel very, very good.

I am absolutely certain that the guy who was selling the book would have had the faintest idea about the author or the title. Maybe it was the number of pages in the book (611) that must have made him think that the book was worth two hundred and fifty bucks that he quoted to me. But since I was already desperate to buy it I bargained just a wee bit out of habit and got the book for two hundred rupees. I am sure the price I paid for it isn’t more than a fraction of the real price of the book. And that’s called luck.