Bibliofile

AFTER spending four years writing—or warding off writer'sblock—Ruchir Joshi's The Last Jet Engine Laughs is finally on its way out. Thenovel, set 20 years in the future, first made news when Ruchir's agent David Godwinsold UK rights to HarperCollins for a whopping £80,000. But now that he has finally gotthe manuscript out, a battle of sorts has broken out between the writer and his Indianpublisher, Indiaink. Indiaink thinks the novel could do with some editing. His UKpublisher, on the other hand, is in a hurry to bring it out. Good or bad, only time andthe reader can judge.

ALL writers bristle at their work being pigeon-holed but how many are prepared tofollow Amitav Ghosh's brave example and boycott the Commonwealth prize for its innercontradictions and exclusivity? Certainly not Githa Hariharan whose The Thousand Faces ofNight won the Commonwealth prize for best first book a few years ago. Labels be damned asfar as she is concerned. "I don't like to be called a post-colonial writer or awoman writer but I'm not sure I would turn down the Orange Prize (for women writers)if it was offered to me. So where is the literary prize that doesn't exclude someoneor the other? All I care about ultimately is being read," declares she. "Thereare so few literary prizes open to writers living and published only in India. TheCommonwealth prize is very special because this is the only way Indian authors publishedin India have a chance of being noticed abroad, or a book, say, from Samoa being readhere."

PUBLISHERS have it hard both ways. There is Amitav Ghosh rapping hisIndian publishers on the knuckles for entering his book for a literary prize withoutconsulting him and there are all those authors, especially first-timers, jamming thetelephone lines with calls—cajoling, threatening, petulant—demanding that he orshe choose their book over a dozen or more other contenders for the Commonwealthnominations.