Bibliofile
She was the ultimate male fantasy, not the woman "of big breasts and a small brain" that boys dream of, but an emperor’s erotic fantasy... who she?
De-light Robbery
Penguin’s cash cow is being lured away, or at least sleeping around in other stables. Hay House’s Ashok Chopra has signed up Shobhaa De for a two-book deal for an undisclosed advance running into several lakhs. And as if poaching wasn’t sore enough, here’s more bad news for Penguin: her book with Hay House, Sixty: A Celebration, comes close on the heels of Superstar India, De’s book on India—and herself—at 60, which Penguin will launch next month.
Long-Lost Parcel
How many writers can boast of writing so many books that they’ve forgotten the existence of some of them? Khushwant Singh recently got a package mailed from London. Inside was a neatly typed and bound manuscript of a book he’d compiled 30 years ago on Britishers who stayed back in India after independence. All he had to do was to think up a new title and call his publisher here.