Bibliofile

Sip With Arsenic

The Crime Writers Festival in Delhi, which was quite unputdownable last year, gets even bigger. The star attraction will be Anurag Kashyap, director of gritty films like Black Friday, Gangs of Wasseypur and Bombay Velvet, talking about crime in films. There are many crime writers like Zac O’Yeah (Hari, A Hero for Hire), Kathryn Hakrup, chemist and an authority on Agatha Christie (A is for Arsenic), Shovon Choudhury, humorist and writer (Murder with Bengali Characteristics) and Veronique Ovalde, a French writer who explores crime through human relationships. If you are in town in mid-January, sneak into this unique festival.

Rolling On

Former Cosmopolitan editor Priya Ramani, the woman who brought panache to the weekend magazine of business newspaper Mint with the classy Lounge, which she led for eight years, has joined Chiki Sarkar’s new publishing firm Juggernaut. Ramani will be editor-at-large, based out of Bangalore, and will focus on a non-fiction list that includes pretty much all genres: lifestyle, sports, business, food, religion, wellness, self-help and so on.

In Pakistanian

The first controversy of the year has already surfaced, though it may not be all that literary. DC Comics’s latest Superman/Wonder Woman annual has a big blunder. The superheroes are in Pakistan’s mountain ranges, saving inn­ocent shepherds from nasty, blue-faced villains. There are many locals screaming for help and the editor’s note says: “All translated from Pakistanian”. Ouch!