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Bibliofile

Yes, the Brits have been decrying the Booker Prize for its dumbing down, but Indians? And the snootiness of Aleph...

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Bibliofile
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Just Like A Sahib

It’s no use the Brits decrying the Booker Prize for its dumbing down. For Indian writers its snob value is as untarnished as ever. Can you think of one Indian writer who would rather win the Asian version of it—the Man Asian—than the “real Booker”? In fact, I’ve heard of at least one of the five long-listed Indian authors for the Man Asian last week boasting to his friends that he’d made it to “the Booker long list,” dropping in a casual aside that “even Amitav Ghosh” hadn’t made the cut-off. So much for Prof David Parker (chairman of the Man Asian prize) claiming that Asia is producing novels of a “scale and ambition we don’t often see in western writing these days”. Join a club that admits writers like you and me? Certainly not!

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A Silver Bear

It’s the same snootiness that makes debut novelists brag that they’ve been just snapped up by Aleph, when it is in fact its downmarket cousin, Rupa, that’s going to publish his book. And who can blame the poor sod—would you want to be in a downmarket list if you can get a toehold in the more upmarket imprint. Nor does it make any difference to them that no less than a former Penguin editor-in-chief is now heading Rupa’s prodigious list.

Pride Of The Street

There’s of course the reverse snobbery. The publisher of Srishti, now famous for producing bestsellers with Bollywood titles like P.S. I Love You, confessed in all modesty that he has one rule: won’t publish an author whose first book appeared elsewhere, especially the big-name publishers like Penguin and HarperCollins!

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