FICTION
The wondrous world of
words
Rupa Bajwa
Working on a new novel has
taken me down unfamiliar, new paths this year and I didn’t get to read
as much in 2008 as I would have liked to. While I am wary of indulging
in any critical analysis right now, here are reminisces of some of the
reading I did this year, and my personal response to it.
NON-FICTION
India comes to
the fore
M. Rajivlochan
OF
all the books released in 2008, the singular best-seller in 2009 would
be Nandan Nilekani’s Imagining India: Ideas for a New Century
(Allen Lane) on what India should do in order to move forward in the
present century. Now, that he has made Infosys so dramatically
successful, everyone would like to know his recipe for making India
great.
Eye-catchers
Boyd
Tonkin and Katy Guest select some of
the outstanding titles of 2008
Fiction
Something to Tell You by
Hanif Kureishi (Faber, £7.99)
AFTER
a quarter-century of nimble and witty provocations, Hanif Kureishi has
kept his entire mischievous gift for insight and outrage. Uniting public
affairs with affairs of the heart, this novel of London life and lust
takes its psychoanalyst narrator on a journey into his, and his
culture’s, tangled past.
Netting
numbers
Roopinder Singh
BOOKS
by young non-professional writers are selling in numbers too big to
ignore. They might have a tough time with critics, and established
authors may have issues in making space for these writers among their
ranks. However, there is no doubt that their books sell, and they have a
special place among readers who respond to them through the Internet via
websites, and blogs.
Take a chill pill with
chick lit
Aruti Nayar
IT’S crazy, it’s zany,
and, of course, it’s chic...what is more, it’s spinning an entire
generation of yuppies into a tizzy. Chick lit is here to stay. Bindis,
saris and bangles happily infuse the book covers that were distinctively
pink and illustrated with lipsticks, martini glasses and stilletoes.
Real
lives on bookshelves
Harbans Singh
AS
the year comes to an end and one recalls the biographical books that
made an impact, one cannot miss the contrast between L. K. Advani’s My
Country, My Life (Rupa & Co) and Barack Obama’s The
Audacity of Hope (Canongate).
International
Bestsellers
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