How Reading Shaped Aravind Adiga

How could we function without our only common language? Doing away with English seemed to me tantamount to doing away with India: We were the language's, before the language was ours.

Booker winner Aravind Adiga talks about his relationship with the English language and the literature that shaped him, in today's Independent.*

Adiga has a new collection of short fiction out : Between the Assassinations.

*(I have a subtext here for the wannabes - this is how hungry an author needs to be for words, this is how widely you have to read if you want to suceed. The writing of others has to form you, before you in turn have anything to give. *Steps off soapbox*)

Obama Gets a Nibbie

There's lots of book award news needs blogging, but perhaps the best headline was the one in The Bookseller : Obama Takes Home a Nibbie.

Yes, Mr. President won one of Britain's 2009 Galaxy British Book Awards ("The Nibbies") which highlight more popular titles. Dreams from My Father was awarded the Tesco Biography of the Year. Kate Summerscale who won two seperate awards (Galaxy Book of the Year and Play.com Popular Non-Fiction Award) for The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.

Aravind Adiga who seems to be showing up on every fiction award going, won the Borders Author of the Year for The White Tiger. Tom Rob Smith was named Waterstones' New Writer of the Year for Child 44 and Richard and Judy's Best Read of the Year was Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News.

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson was awarded the Books Direct Crime Thriller of the Year, while Sebastian Faulks won the Sainsbury's Book of the Year Award for his Bond novel Devil May Care, and Stehenie Meyer took the W.H. Smith Children's Book of the Year award for Breaking Dawn.

Michael Palin was awarded an outstanding achievement award which I think he thoroughly deserves. As TV presenters Richard and Judy said at the ceremony, he is a :

... modern day Renaissance man – a successful actor, comedian, playwright, diarist, documentary maker, charity founder, explorer and, of course, author.

Indian Booker Winners Face Hostility at Home

It qualifies as the ultimate act of subversion. This spectacular feat by writers from a previously colonised nation almost mocking the righteous patronisation the Western literary world would like to heap on writers from the sub-continent. English writers vie for the same prize and that makes the victory sweeter. But back home, as news of yet another Indian writer beating the impossible odds trickles in, the celebration, if any, is muted and tinged with suspicion. Certainly it is nothing when compared to the adulatory headlines every time the Indian Cricket Team beats Australia or England. Even allowing for the much touted cliché that cricket and not literature is the national pastime, it is baffling that these achievers are not accorded a fraction of the accolades that a Bronze Medallist from the Olympics commands. Instead, the hostility they encounter tends to force them into being “Salingeresque” recluses in their own country.

Vijay Nair in The Hindu writes about antagonism towards the Indian Booker prize winners (Aravind Adiga, Kiran Desai and Arundhati Roy) from the literary from the literary establishment in their homeland. It's an awful pity that these authors find their efforts met with so much hostility ... and one wonders if the "tall poppy syndrome" doesn't have something to do with it.

More Christmas Fiction

Here are some very nice Christmas related reads for you to enjoy.

You all know the story of Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but did you know that he had a wife? Poet Carol Ann Duffy tells the story of Mrs Scrooge, and Posy Simmonds adds the charming illustrations.

The Times has a couple of very nice Christmas short stories, Arvind Adiga's Last Christmas in Bandra, while Rachel Johnson writes about a Notting Hill yummy mummy who unwraps the truth in Severely Gifted.

In the Telegraph Justine Picardie tells the tale of The Little Cigarette Girl, and Jane Gardam the story of The Virgins of Bruges.

But any thoughts of fiction at Christmas lead back to Dickens, the man who invented the holiday in the form in which we know it (with turkeys and trees and all that marvellous good will and merriment floating around). Michel Kenny in the Boston Globe looks at the circumstances which lead Dickens to create his Christmas classic (and in just six weeks!). You can read the full thing here and listen to it here. (Another nice piece about Dickens and Christmas by John Walsh appears in the Independent.)

Meanwhile Edward Champion at the Guardian has some great online reading suggestions to save you from an overdose on Christmas kitsch.

A very happy Christmas to you all!

Postscript (26/12/08) :

Let me add one more story : A House by the Sea by Helen Dumore appears in the Independent.

John Llewellyn Rhys Shortlist

Told you there was a lot of award news at the moment! The shortlist for the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, which rewards the best work of literature (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama) by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under was announced on Monday 3 November, and comprises:

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

The Broken Word by Adam Foulds

The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings

The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer

God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin

Selling Your Father’s Bones by Brian Schofield

There are three works of fiction on the list. Ardiga's novel was the winner of this year's Booker prize, of course, and you may remember that Ross Raisin has been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award.

Fould's The Broken Word sounds fascinating - it is a verse novella (and how often do you get those?) set in Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau uprising, and following it's protagonist, Tom, as he returns to the family farm in between leaving public school and going up to Cambridge.

You can read about all the books here on the British Council's Animating Literature website, and there is information about all the authors here. The winner will be announced on Monday 24 November.

Time for Adiga's Tiger

Aravind Adiga has won this year's Man Booker Prize with The White Tiger. Months back, Janet de Neefe who is the director of the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival wrote to tell me that I simply had to read this book. She was so impressed that she invited Adiga to the festival, though sadly for us but happily for him, he flew to London to be there when the announcement was made. Maybe Bali will get him next year?

Although I am only one book into the Booker shortlist this year, I picked the right title to bring away with me on holiday and to write a review of for Starmag. So in that sense I'm happy. As for whether I'm happy with it as the winner ... well I think it will prove a popular choice. It is highly readable (quite zippy actually!), very well written, with relevant and important stuff to say about India's economic miracle, corruption as the only means of survival, the haves and have-nots.

But I am also feeling a little underwhelmed by it. Maybe this is because some of the books I've read recently (including The Brief Wondrous Life of Osar Wao by Junot Dias and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver - both of which I need to write about here) blew me away in a way this book just hasn't managed to yet. (And I'm two-thirds of the way through.) It isn't getting under my skin.

At least, though, I do not feel like chucking it into a Balinese swimming pool as almost happened to Anne Enright's book last year! (A novel I hasten to add that I came to greatly appreciate on second reading.)

I also keep comparing it to Indra Sinha's Animal's People which was shortlisted last year and with which I feel it shares certain similarities. Yet I feel that Sinha's book is far the stronger ... I connected with Animal far more than I'm able to connect with Balram.

But I'm happy for Adiga. He's only the fourth debut novelist to have won, and the second youngest ever, and the fifth Indian author. Michael Portillo, chair of the judges, said that for the panel in the end :

... what set this book apart was its originality; for many of us this is entirely new territory - India the dark side. It was in many ways perfect.

Charlotte Higgins writes about the winner on the Guardian website and there is also an extract from the book to whet your appetite. John Sutherland writes an amusing piece about the categories that Booker winners fit into and ask where this book belongs. (He concludes that Adiga is both shooting star and uncommonly readable.) Sam Jordison reviews the novel here.

There's another extract on the Telegraph site, and you might like to read Neal Mukerjee's review here.

I'll append any other relevant links here later.

The Ubud Quill

You can pick up a free special edition of MPH's Quill magazine put together especially for the Ubud readers and Writers Festival which is taking place in Bali next month. It is however only available at the following outlets : 1. MPH One Utama 2. MPH Mid Valley 3. MPH Subang Parade 4. MPH Bangsar Village II I have a couple of pieces in the magazine including an interview with Janet de Neefe who founded the festival, an interview with Canadian author Camilla Gibb (whom many of you will remember from the KL Literary Festival), and the interview with Preeta Samarasan which also appeares in the current edition of Quill. Eric has put some really good stuff from the issue on his blog, including an an interview with Aravind Adiga (right) whose first novel The White Tiger is Booker longlisted. If the issue whets your appetite and makes you hungry for more contact with the authors featured ... well you know what you have to do!