Bibliofile

A Muffler Writes

There have been at least a dozen books on Narendra Modi in the last few months, in English, Hindi, Guja­r­ati, Kannada etc. Now publishers are in a rush to find writers who can quickly churn out a bio of the man of the mom­ent, Arvind Kejriwal. One top publishing house is on the look-out for journalists who have tracked Kejriwal from his Parivartan and India Against Corr­uption days, somebody who can do a book on him at short notice. The good news is he’s always had many journalist friends (many senior AAP leaders like Ashish Khaitan, Manish Sisodia, Ashutosh are journos) and surely many more will be ready take the plunge to write his biography.

Ready To Pounce

A new publishing house is ready with its first titles. Speaking Tiger, started by Manas Saikia and Ravi Singh (who quit Aleph Book Co over "ideological" issues) is all set to launch three titles. They have grabbed filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt from Aleph—his novel All That Could Have Been, based on the screenplay of his forthcoming film Hamari Adhuri Kahani, will be out soon. Bhatt will also do his autobiography with ST. The legendary Ruskin Bond too is publishing with them his new work, A Book of Simple Living. A new edition of Omair Ahmad's book, The Storyteller's Tale, too is ready.

Read, Lah

The World Book Fair is on from 14-22 of this month in New Delhi's Pragati Maidan. It's hard to believe, but it's the 41st edition! The partner country is Singapore, and the fair's theme is the Northeast, reason enough that it should throw up some fresh voices, at least for the capital.