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Bibliofile

As A.K. Ramanujan said, there are "more competent second-rate writers in English than in the languages". That was much before Sir Vidia's Other Half of <i >Half a Life</i>, though.

"She is topping up your engine oil for the cross-country coming up. Your RPM is hitting a new high. To wait any longer would be to lose prime time.... She picks up a Bugatti’s momentum. You want her more at a Volkswagen’s steady trot. Squeeze the maximum mileage out of your gallon of gas. But she’s eating up the road with all cylinders blazing
Literary Review

A.K. Ramanujan, whose posthumous volumes are beginning to rival the ones he wrote in his lifetime, could be devastating in his gentle way. "Bad writing is not the monopoly of Indian writers," he declared in an interview that is published in the latest—and heftiest—volume, The Oxford India Ramanujan. As for that eternal debate on IWE vs the rest of Indian literature, the Chicago-based poet did not pull his punches: he considered that the best writers were in regional languages, but there are "more competent second-rate writers in English than in the languages".

So the novel isn’t dead after all. The man who declared it dead has just put the finishing touches to his latest work of fiction. V.S. Naipaul has recently packed off his post-Nobel novel to his publishers. Is this the Other Half of Half a Life?

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