Bibliofile

Rupa Rules

But Penguin lost out on this year's likely top seller: Jaswant Singh's A Call To Honour. A miffed Jaswant apparently withdrew his manuscript from Penguin, citing "unprofessionalism" as excuse. He took his book to Rupa whose "professional competence" he lauds in his acknowledgements. Rupa, of course, was quick to take advantage of Jaswant's disaffection with Penguin: it signed him up for four more books: Travels in Transoxiana, Ayodhya, Rahim Khan and Martyrs of the Indian Army.

There's No Manicure
One hazard of inviting Mani Shankar Aiyar to launch a book is his foot-in-the-mouth syndrome. At the launch of fellow-Stephanian Prem Shankar Jha's The Twilight of the Nation State, Mani told a packed audience how the book's conclusion was "like taking a girl on a date, and just when you think you've won her over, she gets up and says, 'Sorry, I have to go, my husband's waiting'."