Modest Man Wins Again

I'm still amazed that these books have become such a phenomenon ... It's almost a study in how not to write a bestseller. They're set in this far-flung, very enigmatic place with lots of tragedy. The good guys die. I'm completely surprised.

The very modest Khaled Hosseini is interviewed in The Times. His second novel A Thousand Splendid Suns has just won The Times/WHSmith Paperback of the Year.

Now for the Nibbies ...

And now it's time for the Nibbies, as the British Book Awards are affectionately known, a whole cluster of awards decided by publishers, booksellers and the general public, and reflecting (i think it's fair to say) more popular, rather than rarefied literary, taste.

Among the winners :

Ian McEwan picks up the Galaxy Book of the Year for On Chesil Beach, and Reader's Digest make him Author of the Year.

Richard and Judy vote Khaled Hossieni's A Thousand Splendid Suns, their Book of the Year.

Catherine O'Flynn is Waterstones' Newcomer of the Year.

Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter wins Sainsbury's Book of the Year.

And J.K. Rowling gets the Book People Outstanding Achievement Award.

The complete list of awards and shortlisted titles here.

Lindsay Irvine takes a look at this year's awards in the Guardian.

Kite Runner Controversy

The filming of Khaled Hosseini's best selling novel The Kite Runner has run into controversy in Afghanistan where it is set, according to a report on the BBC website.

And if you've read the book, I'm sure you can guess which scene has caused the furor.

The novel has sold more than eight million copies worldwide. In the UK where it has sold more than a million copies, it's success is largely due to it's popularity among book clubs. It was voted the best book club read of the year for the second year running by members of the public and entrants of the 2007 Penguin/Orange Broadband Readers' Group prize according to the Times.

(The photo is from the BBC website and shows Ahmad Khan who plays Hassan.)

High as Kites

Ugggh! It can't be after 10 a.m. already, can it? I don't know what Sham put in the (delicious!) chocolate mousse last night, but I've only just crawled out of bed feeling like yesterday's left-overs reheated.

(This after two different people told me yesterday "I don't know how you get up so early to post on your blog, day after day"! Sorry to sully my unblemished record. )

Maybe it was brain-burn-out brought on by all the intellectual discussion generated by our reading group meeting last night when Fiction&Friends met to discuss our book of the month at Sham's house - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

For those of you who don't know the book, it is the story of two motherless boys (Amir, the son of a wealthy buisness man in Kabul, and Hassan who is the son of their Hazara servant ) who grow up as inseperable friends. Then an act of violence, which Amir makes no attempt to stop, shatters the friendship. Amir's cowardice continues to haunts him, even after he has fled to America, married, and built a successful career as a writer. He is finally given the opportunity to confront the demons of his past in a perilous journey into war-torn Afganistan.

Extremely readable, the book got a firm thumbs up from everyone. Most had had an emotional journey through it, and used up plenty of tissues. (Though not cynical old me.) We loved the setting, which showed us prewar Kabul and gave us cultural insights into a country most of us know only from news bulletins.

(If you've enjoyed the book, you might like to read Khaled Hosseini's fascinating account of his real-life journey back to Kabul to find his father's house after the book was written, only to find how much art imitiates life.)

The dramatic "sin and redemption" theme, the almost stock-villain Aseef, and the obvious contrivance of the plot twists were explained neatly by my reading group buddies. "It's just like a Hindi movie," they all agreed, and being Bollywood fans loved the book even more for that.

Krishna provided the biggest laugh of the evening when he started talking about the events in "the third-half of the book" and couldn't see why we were all falling about. He should have been born blonde.