In 2014, Indian publishing focused on literature revolving around politics — memoirs, diaries, biographies, especially before the general election. 2015 will have books such as In My Defence by controversial former Union communications minister A. Raja. Accused in the press of costing the government Rs 1.76 lakh crore and, of taking bribes in the telecom scam, Mr Raja had to spend 15 months in Tihar Jail. Mr Raja with Paran Balakrishnan tells his side of the story — defending his decision regarding 2G spectrum allotment, drawing a revelatory picture of the corridors of power and the pressures he faced from big business, government and the bureaucracy, and of his time in jail. According to the book’s blurb it is “honest, hard-hitting and with no holds barred”.
The success of this genre could be measured by the fact that last year approximately 85,000 copies of Sanjaya Baru’s The Accidental Prime Minister were sold. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful election campaign being considered for replication in other nations going to polls in 2015, Candidate India: Modi’s Epic Election Campaign by Ashok Malik and Manoj Ladwa would be worth looking out for. It is a behind-the-scenes account of Mr Modi’s historic election campaign by the men who ran the campaign. Does it spell achhe din for politics-related literature?
If 2014 marked the commemoration of World War I through every conceivable genre in literature, 2015 will focus upon aspects of the war not often documented in mainstream literature.
For instance, Yasmin Khan in The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War marshals interviews, newspaper reports and unseen archival material to tell the forgotten story of India’s role in the Second World War.
Soldiers, sailors and non-combatants like prostitutes, nurses, cooks, peasants, whose lives were radically upended by a war far far away are described. Over one and a half million Indian soldiers had gone to the frontline, the largest volunteer Army from any of the colonies.
The dead and missing were nearly 72,000, with many more wounded. Shrabani Basu’s For King and Another Country focuses upon the survivors of the war. Raghu Karnad’s Farthest Field: A Story of India’s Second World War is hotly anticipated.
It is a non-fiction epic, a war narrated through the lives and deaths of a single family.
It follows the lives of four young men and women during the war and through that tells the larger story of India’s experience. He interviewed many veterans for the background research, but most of them don’t personally figure.
Business innovations continue to enthral lay readers. Frugal Innovation: How to do more with less by Navi Radjou and Jaideep Prabhu features over 50 case studies of top global companies (including GE, Unilever, Pearson, Barclays and M&S) that are using the principles of frugal innovation to create more economic and social value at lower cost and in an eco-friendly manner in developed economies.
Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender & Rick Tetzeli will look at Jobs’ career after he was dismissed from Apple. This is based upon recently rediscovered, personal taped interviews between Jobs and Schlender, who had known each other for 25 years.
In translations Ali Akbar Natiq’s collection of short stories, What Will You Give for This Beauty (translated from Urdu by Ali Madeeh Hashmi) has been described as “some of the genre’s finest in contemporary Urdu literature” by Musharraf Ali Farooqi.
Natiq began working as a mason, specialising in domes and minarets, to contribute to the family income while he read widely in Urdu and Arabic. The other translations that stand out are art critic Vinod Bhardwaj’s satirical novel on the art world mafia, Sepukku (translated from Hindi by Brij Sharma); Clever Wives and Happy Idiots; Folktales from the Kumaon Himalayas, retold by Ivan Minayev (1875), translated from Russian by Bulbul Sharma and Madhu Malik; Agnisakshi (only novel of Lalithambika Antharjanam, Malayalam writer.
It won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award in 1977); Suragi U.R. Ananthamurthy’s autobiographical narrative will be available in English for the first time and Makarand Sathe’s A Socio-political History of Marathi Theatre: Thirty Nights (three-vol boxset) presents a detailed history of the development of modern Marathi theatre. The work is written in the form of a dialogue between a writer and a clown, where the clown goes on to educate the writer, by narrating to him the history of Marathi theatre, taking him through its inception in 1842 to 1985.
Originally written in Marathi, this encyclopaedic work would narrate a social history of Maharashtra and of India as seen through the window of theatre. The narration proceeds through 30 nights, loosely following the structure of Arabian Nights, woven around the question, “Who am I?”
Award-winning historian-turned-writer Subhadra Sen Gupta is known for making history engaging and presenting accurate facts. Her forthcoming book A Children’s History of India (illustrated by Priyankar Gupta) should be on everyone’s radar. (Another book, similar title, written by Sheila Dhar was published in 1971 to a resounding success.)
Eyewitness Mughals an illustrated account and Dear Mrs Naidu by Mathangi Subramanian, a novel about the daily life, thoughts, friendships and struggles of a sparky 12-year-old girl as she learns about her rights, and puts them into action through her correspondence with a dead freedom fighter, Sarojini Naidu.
History-mystery and historical romances as published by Duckbill Books and Scholastics add to the variety available. Sudeshna Guha’s A History of India Through Objects promises to be a cohesive history of the subcontinent through various historical objects. (It promises to be along the lines of Neil MacGregor’s fabulous A History of the World in 100 Objects.) The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans & other Foreigners who Became Indian by Jonathan Gill Harris narrates gripping accounts of immigrants such as healers, soldiers, artists, ascetics, thieves, pirates and courtesans who were not powerful or privileged.
The migrants came from Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia, West Asia and Greece and have helped create India’s exceptionally diverse cultural mix.
2014 was the year of debut novels, 2015 is the return of big name authors with new offerings.
Some of these are Amitav Ghosh, Raj Kamal Jha, Anjan Sundaram, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mario Vargos Llosa, Toni Morrison, Jo Nesbo, Kate Atkinson, Afar Nafisi (who ten years ago wrote Reading Lolita in Teheran) with Republic of Imagination, Amartya Sen, Abdul Kalam, Alex Rutherford, Anuradha Roy, Manjula Padmanabhan, John Grisham, Candace Bushnell, Sarita Mandana, Jeffrey Archer, Sunjeev Sahota, Omar Shahid Hamid, Siddharth Chowdhury and Steig Larsson and David Lagercrantz.
Last year A.N. Wilson set a high benchmark in writing biographies with his Victoria: A Life.
It struck an exquisite balance between storytelling, historical facts and rich, personal insights from 19th-century documents and accounts.
Hopefully some of the biographies being published in 2015 will match the expectations of readers: John le Carre by Adam Sisman; Firaq Gorakhpuri: A Biography by Ajai Mansingh; The Famous Ghalib translated and explained by Ralph Russell (edited by Marion Molteno); Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Ananda.
It is about the daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh (she was Queen Victoria’s god daughter), Sophia fought for Indian Independence, the fate of the Lascars, the welfare of Indian soldiers in the First World War and, above all, was part of the Suffragette Movement.
This genre is also a fast growing segment in children’s literature too.
After Scholastics, Puffin India, Pratham Books biography series introduces children to personalities such as Dhyan Chand, Rukmini Devi Arundale, Dasrath Manjhi and Dada Saheb Phalke.
There is plenty to look forward to in 2015!
Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is an independent international publishing consultant and columnist based in New Delhi.
