Interview with Samit Basu

“Let us imagine that you had bought, in secret, the world’s most precious jewel, the Eye of Empire, a massive ruby known to have left a trail of lives—violently lost—behind it as it journeyed across harsh lands in the care of desperate men.” So begins Samit Basu’s new book Terror on the Titanic – his first Young Adult novel.

Meet Samit, India’s first fantasy novelist and the first well-known Indian author to cross over into comics. He is the author of an extremely popular trilogy of fantasy novels, the GameWorld Trilogy, comprising The Simoqin Prophecies (2004) The Manticore’s Secret (2005) and The Unwaba Revelations (2007). He has written comics for Marvel Comics in India. Outlook featured him as one of the Indians under 25 to watch for along with Shreya Ghoshal – India’s top playback singer and Konkona Sen Sharma the brilliant actress. He got inspired to start a career as an author during a dull class at IIM (Ahmedabad) while pursuing his MBA. Read on what this talented writer is all about. Read more

Mass Market Novels at Two Dollars

Pricing does matter. Especially when it comes to books. It is probably a sign of the times that Harper Collins (Full disclosure: They publish my novel Married But Available) has decided to price Karan Bajaj’s upcoming second book at Rs 99/- almost $2 for a paperback version. That I think is the sweet spot for pricing as Chetan Bhagat has showed us with his novels. The yet-to-be released thriller ‘Johnny Gone Down’ by Karan Bajaj is set to make publishing history with a first print run of 50,000 books, billed as one of the biggest ever in India for a work of fiction. Read more

Married But Available and The Hindu

This year I had received a Valentine’s Day gift. Only I did not know I had got a gift. My second novel Married But Available had hit the bestsellers list of The Hindu newspaper – a leading daily newspaper in English in India. According to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2008 The Hindu is the third most-widely read English newspaper in India (after Times of India and Hindustan Times) with a readership of 5.2 million. I have often wondered if commercial fiction and literary fiction should share a common bestseller list. Is that fair? Then again, can bestseller lists be made for different genres? Probably not. If so, we are back to where we started – lists are made across genres. So here are the bestsellers in fiction from the Hindu newspaper’s Vishakhapatnam edition dated 14 Feb 2009 (need I add that I love the people of Vizag for their great literary choice … see proof below. Read more

The Curious Case of 221 B

The quizmaster’s question to you is, “Which fictional character lived at 221 B, Baker Street?” The answer is  Sherlock Holmes. You know that. Of course you do. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the first public appearance of Holmes was in 1887. Sherlock Holmes birthday is generally deduced to be January 6, 1854. Holmes lived with his good friend and chronicler Watson, before his (Watson’s) marriage in 1887, and again after his wife’s  death.  Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this context, the term “canon” is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle’s original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters.
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Sonia Faleiro

Meet Sonia Faleiro, the globe trotting writer, award winning journalist and storyteller. She is the author of The Girl (Viking 2005), and a contributor to AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India (Random House, Vintage UK, Anchor Books US). Her nonfiction book on Bombay’s bar dancers will be published by Penguin in 2010. She has her website at www.soniafaleiro.com which has some interesting podcasts.

She blogs at http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com/ and has a Jack Russel Terrier dog named  Zoey Faleiro-McKnight (See inset photo). “Faleiro from my mum, McKnight from my dad”, says Zoey on his blog. Sonia is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/soniafaleiro if you want to follow her. Read more

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