Bibliofile

Some Nobel aspirants never give up. A leading (or should that be the leading?) newspaper published an interview with the poet more famous than her poetry, Kamala Das, advertising her self-proclaimed title of Nobel nominee. What in Alfred Nobel's name does that mean? The Swedish Academy that gives out the prize is a stickler about confidentiality: not a word of the jury's deliberations, let alone the names of individual nominees, can be leaked out for at least 50 years. As to being a Nobel literature nominee, it's easy: any professor of literature or linguistics can forward a nomination. So can any member of a literary academy or institution. Khushwant Singh often tells the story of how G.V. Desani, single-book author of All About H. Hatterr, persuaded him when he was in the UK High Commission to file his nomination. Then president S. Radhakrishnan wasn't amused: he had an eye on the prize himself!

Rumours of a foreign bookchain planning to set up shop in India are sending shivers up the spine of Indian publishers. Unlike Indian bookstores that stock almost anything publishers foist on them, bookchains abroad call the shots in the publishing world—from book jacket to title to content.

If one had any doubts about the veracity of our bestseller lists, an entry in one of last week's lists should put a rest to it. Appearing out of the blue on one newspaper's list is a book that bookshops hastily returned to the publisher some 13 years ago: Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by Sashi and Meenakshi Ahluwalia. Even Amazon, that last resort of long-forgotten and unsold books, doesn't stock it anymore. Authors have been caught buying up their own books or posting reviews by themselves on e-bookstores. But that's one sin the authors can't be accused of in this case: under the book title listed in Amazon is an inviting message, be the first to review this book.