Bibliofile

Size Matters

Is size a gender thing? Apparently it is, as far as literature goes. On hearing of daughter Kiran Desai's Booker win, Anita Desai couldn't resist airing what must be a pet peeve: how publishers insisted on pruning The Inheritance of Loss to less than half its original size. Of course, there was R.K. Narayan who had difficulty getting publishers to take his debut book, Swami and Friends, seriously only because it was too slim. But it still hurts, especially when an author like Vikram Chandra came out a few months after Kiran with a book that was twice its bulk.

Digging Out A Yorker
"This is the worst book I've ever read in my life. It is perverse, horrible and awful, and there is no way to rescue it," is what a New Yorker magazine editor told Kiran Desai after reading The Inheritance of Loss. Guess who is having the last laugh now...