Diaspora in Jaipur, Launch in Delhi

Congrats to Tash Aw whose second novel Map Of The Invisible World is being launched today at the Habitat Centre in Delhi by HarperCollins India, along with Lijia Zhang's Socialism Is Great! A Worker's Memoir Of The New China.

Jabberwock caught the session with Tash, Hari Kunzru, Tahmima Anam and Nadeem Aslan at the Jaipur Literary festival a few days back where the authors on the topic "Diaspora". They talked about heir personal cultural journeys and also about whether or not they felt a responsibility to their country when they wrote ...

Pakistan's Fast Bowlers

Shashi Tharoor writing in The Times of India (found via The Complete Review) finds that although Pakistani Fiction in English got off to a slow start :

... the Pakistani diaspora has in recent years produced a remarkable series of novels with affinities to Pakistan and with narratives often set there ...

among them Mohsin Hamid :

... whose two novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist notably finally woke up the rest of the world to Pakistani fiction in English.

and several younger writers including Nadeem Aslam (right) (Maps for Lost Lovers). Tharoor mentions too the debut of two remarkable novels - Mohammed Hanif's :

... exuberant and risk-taking A Case of Exploding Mangoes

and Ali Sethi whose :

... about-to-be-published novel, set in Lahore, is the story of a fatherless Pakistani boy rose in a family of outspoken women, and has already received a gigantic advance. Even India hasn't yet produced a 23-year-old world-class author. The future of Pakistani writing in English seems not just secure, but exciting.

Mohsin Hamid (left) has apparently identified an interesting phenomena which he calls the "fast-bowler effect", which is something we're also experiencing here in Malaysia :

... one writer, like one fast bowler in a cricket team, finds it difficult to make an impact, but when there is at least a pair of them, the world suddenly starts taking the team seriously.

(Image at top by Hamzah Shah on Flickr.)