India’s book economy is, however, on a different arc, from that of the West and, like the Indian newspaper industry, is still on its way up rather than down. For an observer of Indian literature in English (for the purposes of this essay, I include under “Indian literature in English” both work originally written in English and that translated into English), the last decade was full of bright lights on all three counts of publishing, book-selling, and the density and internal diversity of the idea of literature and the spread of a reading culture. [. . .]

The birth of many new publishing houses and imprints in the last decade, the explosion in the number of books published, the increase in the number of bookshops (particularly the big chains like Crossword, Landmark and Odyssey) and the growth of the online book trade all point to one thing. The book business is growing rapidly. In 2010, the estimated value of the trade book market (covering, that is, books published for the general reader, and not textbooks or technical books) was about 1500 crores . This is three times the size of the book market in 2000.

When Penguin, the market leader in the trade segment (with about 15%), started up its operations in India in 1987, it published seven titles that year. In 2000, it was up to 124 titles a year. This year, it was about 240 – a reliable index of how things have come alongin to decades. Further, many more players have a slice of that pie than was the case ten years ago. A number of new English trade and academic publishing houses – Random House India, Permanent Black, Westland Books, Hachette, Blaft, Navayana, Yoda, Niyogi, and Srishti – appeared over the last decade to compete with the older guard of Penguin, HarperCollins, Rupa, Orient Blackswan, Oxford University Press, Seagull, Zubaan, Picador, Katha, Roli, Mapin, and Stree Samya, claiming a share of the trade even as they helped increase its size with their distinct emphases.

Isn’t it nice to see some good news about publishing for once? That said, the bookstore scene sounds a bit less than amazing though:

The physical Indian bookshop, though, with some honorable exceptions, continues to be a disappointing place for the serious reader. Stocking an indequate range of titles and manned by staff who have no real interest in or knowledge of books, bookshops in India don’t yet manage to fulfil the publisher Andre Shiffrin’s idea that “The good bookshop doesn’t just have the book you want, it has the book you never knew you wanted.”

This section on Indian authors writing in English and the need for a more readerly-culture is pretty interesting:

Indian literature itself occupies a much larger place in world literary consciousness than it did at the beginning of the decade, with a small raft of big Indian names giving way to a whole schooner of exciting voices. The typical first-time Indian novelist or short-story writer in English today is much less self-conscious in his or her approach to the language than, say, two decades ago, and much more sure of his or her audience. The result is that good new works of fiction appear now not in their ones and twos but at the rate of a couple of dozen a year. In a multicultural and globalizing world, in the age of the Internet and with easy access to a hospitable market, Indian writers are also likely to be from more diverse backgrounds than previously, and to have a far wider range of narrative and aesthetic influences across mediums, from novels to films to music to comic books.

Unfortunately, writers in English have a much greater chance of being published in markets outside India (something that distorts foreign perceptions of Indian literature). This is slowly changing, but it may take another decade to take full effect. The revolution must begin, however, by more Indian readers consciously seeking out Indian literature in translation (some older essays on what I think are great Indian novels in translation are here: ).

Indeed, the role and agency of readers, as much as writers, in a literature cannot be overestimated. Any vibrant literature requires a sizeable number of discerning readers who not only follow the work of writers but are in some sense in advance of them, and whose impatience with sterile forms and stories, and skepticism of prevailing power structures, creates an atmosphere of ferment and ambition where distinctive visions and bold new energies can exercise their spirits. Such readers are now everywhere in evidence in India, but their numbers are still too small or them to be gamechangers. Perhaps by the year 2020 . . .

Anyway, a physical copy of the new issue arrived last week with a really kind note from Assistant Director & Editor-in-Chief Daniel Simon addressing my subscription gripe and pointing out that the On one hand, I feel bad for making fun of the old website (which, admittedly, did suck), but if that in any way helped bring about this radical change, I feel like I helped contribute to the greater good of all of humanity—and that it’s time for a celebratory beer! (Which, admittedly, sounds like a perfect end to the week.)

Thanks again, Daniel, I really appreciate the hard copy and really look forward to reading this issue—there’s a lot of great stuff in here. The main focus is which was guest edited by Sudeep Sen and contains the following:

Two poems, in new translation, appear here by the celebrated Urdu poet and lyricist Gulzar, who won the Oscar for the song “Jai Ho” from the recent film Slumdog Millionaire. There are poems in Hindi by Ashok Vajpeyi, Mangalesh Dabral, and Anamika; as well as others by K. Satchidanandan, Subodh Sarkar, and J. P. Das in Malayalam, Bengali, and Oriya, respectively.

The English-language section is spearheaded by the literary star Vikram Seth. There are finely engaging pieces by Amit Chaudhuri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Meena Alexander, Amitava Kumar, Anita Nair, Daljit Nagra, Ravi Shankar, Beena Kamlani, and many others.

Samaresh Basu’s and Premendra Mitra’s evocative stories in Bengali add a rich texture to the overall anthology.

As a special tribute to celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of India’s Nobel Laureate in Literature, Rabindranath Tagore, there is a containing an unusual selection of his poetry and poem-songs.

Also included in this issue is a piece on Akashic’s Noir Series (we should have a review of Moscow Noir in the next few weeks), an essay on Aharon Appelfeld, and an interview with South African writer Rayda Jacobs. And as with every issue, there’s an extensive World Literature in Review section.

Just to give WLT a bit more love, I would recommend “liking” their and checking out their And while you’re at it, you could always subscribe—to either the or editions.

Also, you can receive a free issue simply by

OK. Now I can enjoy my weekend with a clear(er) conscience.

I have to admit that until reading Rakesh Khanna’s comment on an earlier post, I had never heard of but I really like their mission statement:

Blaft Publications is a new independent publishing house based in Chennai, India. Our releases so far include an anthology of Tamil pulp fiction, a translation of an experimental Tamil novel, a book of drawings, and a book of English short stories.

However, in the future, Blaft has much wider goals. We are planning to eventually branch out into translations of fiction from other regional languages of South Asia, English fiction, comic books, graphic novels, children’s books, non-fiction, textbooks, how-to-manuals, encyclopedias, and kitchen appliances.

All of their titles are available in America, but apparently only through Amazon.com, which is unfortunate. After reading the first half of Zero Degree, I’m pretty sure there are a number of booksellers out there who would be into this book—it’s the first Tamil title I’ve encountered that includes a dedication to Kathy Acker and a reference to the Oulipo. . . . Rather than summarize the book—I plan on writing a full review in the near future—I thought I’d share the translator’s introduction:

We would like to let Zero Degree speak for itself, after taking just a moment to disavow our personal support for any political agenda that this book or its characters may have, and also to point out two idiosyncratic difficulties the book posed for the translator.

First, in keeping with the numerological theme of Zero Degree, the only numbers expressed in either words or symbols are numerologically equivalent to nine (with the exception of two chapters). This Oulipian ban includes the very common Tamil word å¼, one, used very much like the English one (“one day”, “one of them”, etc.). The way Charu Nivedita works around this constraint in Tamil is a notable feature of the original text. However, Tamil has some better substitutes for this word than English does. For instance, there are two pronouns each for he and she: Üõ¡/Üõoe [Ed. Note: I can’t figure out how to get the script to appear correctly online—sorry about that.] (roughly “that man”/“that woman”) and Þõ¡/Þõoe (“this man”/“this woman”). The lack of single-word English equivalents sometimes results in less graceful constructions than Tamil makes possible. We have done our best to make these sentences easily readable without using the forbidden numbers.

Secondly, many sections of the book are written entirely without punctuation, or using only periods. This reminds the Tamil reader of an ancient style of writing, before Western punctuation marks were adopted into the script. However, in English, omitting punctuation, besides being confusing, would fail to give this effect. Therefore, we have inserted punctuation marks in many chapters, except where it seemed important to the meaning of the text to leave them out.

Zero Degree was first published in Chennai in 1998. It is the author’s second novel, and features many of the same characters that appeared in his first, Existentialism and Fancy Banyan. It did well enough for a second and third edition, and was also translated into Malayalam by Balasubramaniam and P. M. Girish. In Kerala, the book generated a great deal of . . .

[The remainder of the translators’ note was destroyed by a computer virus.]

Pritham K. Chakravarthy
Rakesh Khanna

What’s really interesting about this is the description of the Indian literary scene:

PRATILIPI: India is a multilingual, multi-script culture. The Indian constitution recognizes 22 languages, excluding English. The Sahitya Akademi (the National Academy of Letters) recognizes 24 – including English. They publish two periodicals, one in Hindi and one in English, with work from all Indian languages – translated into Hindi or English. Similarly, there are magazines published by the State Academies, in the language of the region. Sometimes they too carry translations from other Indian languages. Still, there are no magazines/platforms that have the scope and flexibility to bring all these literatures together.

Besides, one of the persisting legacies of colonialism is that English is the dominant language when it comes to translations. Most translations from Indian languages are into English. Translations across Indian languages are rare (except by the Sahitya Akademi) and, ironically, this is something not many people, including writers, are very worried about. Translation into English gets you some money, recognition, near-canonization and a pan-Indian/global presence – something that translation into another Indian language cannot offer.

In such a scenario, we wish we could be a magazine where interaction across Indian languages and also between the Hindi and English worlds of national literary life could take place. Most good authors in Indian languages get translated into English, but the two worlds have remained, basically, very different worlds.

Hindi and Indian languages have maintained the Nehruvian welfare model in a dangerous way. Nothing can happen there without government involvement in the form of institutions or funds. And there are the publishers’ canards about readership in Indian languages. Even when satellite-TV giants and publishers like Penguin and Harper Collins have entered the Hindi/Bhasha market, everybody keeps repeating that Hindi/Indian language literature does not sell. In Hindi and other languages, the average print run for a book is 1000, with most of the copies going to public-sector libraries at a profit margin that has kept some publishers in business for more than sixty years. On the other hand, the English scene has always been market-driven.

The World Literature Tour is moving on from Ireland to

A week of celebrations of the 60th anniversary of independence in both India and Pakistan has whetted our appetite, and we’ve seized the controls to head for a one-off two-country special edition.

As usual, we’d like recommendations for novels, plays, poetry and even non-fiction that enlightens or inspires. Perhaps we’ve all heard of Salman Rushdie, or Vikram Seth, but where’s the best place to start? Midnight’s Children? The Satanic Verses? A Suitable Boy? And where are the gems from authors who are less well-known, or whose work is not yet translated?

There is no denying the significance of years of military rule and censorship – and vastly different population sizes – in the different trajectories of the Pakistani and Indian novel but, as with all things subcontinental, there is also a cricket metaphor lurking: ‘the fast bowler effect’ as Mohsin Hamid puts it. From the 1980s until now, India has produced a steady stream of deadly fast bowlers – not because of anything genetic or temperamental particular to it, but because great success leads to emulation, just as every cricket-playing boy grew up wanting to be Sarfaraz or Imran, Wasim or Waqar. The importance of pairs is key – a single bowler or writer is exceptional; double the number and people start spotting a trend of which they can be a part. While India’s writers were attracting the attention of readers and marketing departments, and being an Indian novelist became a viable way of earning a living, Pakistan continued to think gloomily that, in novels as in tourism, the world was far more interested in India. One Pakistani writer might slip through the cracks here and there, but received wisdom had it that our ‘Midnight’s Children moment’ would never come.

Thankfully, she does include a list of interesting authors/books to check out:

Uzma Aslam Khan’s Trespassing (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ prize, Eurasia region); Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers (shortlisted for the IMPAC award), Mohsin Hamid’s Mothsmoke (winner of a Betty Trask award). Last year, the inaugural list of Penguin’s new imprint Fig Tree included Moni Mohsin’s The End of Innocence – and already one of the most keenly anticipated literary debuts of 2008 is Mohommed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes. The short story form is well served, meanwhile, by Aamer Hussain, whose fifth collection Insomnia was published earlier this year, and Imad Rehman whose I Dream of Microwaves has yet to find a home in the UK but was published to critical acclaim in the US.

The English language itself is the focus of this piece:

Nationalists saw English as one of the chains that bound India to servitude and hoped that once the Raj was sent packing its language would quickly follow.

And,

The success of Indian English literature has provoked mixed reactions. Amongst its practitioners there has been much backbiting. Some accuse others of spurning the “true” forms of Indian literary prose – the exquisite fragment, the intense short story – for the alien, but lucrative and sometimes flabby flamboyance of magic realism. In India itself a full-blown backlash grew in the form of the “nativist” or Desivad movement. Strong in western India, this school exhorted writers to embrace their own Bhasha (local) language and eschew even translation.

Obviously, Indian literature written in English is here to stay, and Misra ends with an uplifting, though unlikely thought about the side-effect of this writing:

It may also, along the way, make western readers more curious about the literature that lies behind it, and provoke publishers to commission some translations of the superb vernacular writing of 20th century India.

But there is another kind of collaboration, one harder to categorise, and that is with publishers in the west. Writers working in English find that being read in India is still an after-effect of being published in Britain or America, in spite of the growing body of literature in English that is being published initially, or even exclusively, in India. Publication in the west has always been crucial, right from Graham Greene’s intervention on behalf of RK Narayan around the time the Progressive Writers’ Association was being formed, but it became a noticeable phenomenon only when the presence of Indian writers in the west began to coincide with other global trends: the increasing interest of the west in India as a market and the desire of a rising Indian elite to flaunt its affluence on a global scale.