Bibliofile

Get It Rolling

Ace publisher Chiki Sarkar has got a unique identity and, well, new clothes. Nandan Nilekani, and William Bissel of Fabindia have joined her to start a brand new publishing house, Jugger­naut. The four top professionals who followed suit after Sarkar’s quitting of Penguin Random House last April—Nandini Mehta, Jaishree Ram Mohan, Gavin Morris and R. Sivapriya—have joined her along with Durga Rag­hunath, co-founder of Firstpost, who will be CEO. Juggernaut targets to publish 50 books every year, starting from 2016 and will be trying out new things on the digital platform. “We want to create a world-class Ind­ian publishing company that will be recognised internationally and pioneer new ways of publishing and reading,” says Sarkar.

A Run For The Kill

Indian-origin British writer Sun­jeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runa­ways (reviewed in these pages) makes it to the Booker Prize shortlist but, alas, Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter (reviewed here recently) mis­ses out. Surpris­in­gly, veteran Ame­rican writer Mar­ilynne Robinson’s Lila is also out of the running. All eyes are on the first Jamaican author to make it to the Booker shortlist, Mar­lon James, and his tumultuous A Brief History of Seven Killings—”a mix of Tarantino, David Foster Wal­lace and Faulkner”—on the attempted assassination of Bob Marley.

While On Holyday

A general prayer for holidays from Punch: Keep thou, O Lord, this Cha­rter Flight; safe in the bosom of the Night. Deliver us from fret and fuss. If not, at least deliver us.