The IWE continue to create waves abroad—the latest being Amit Chaudhuri, the first Indian to be elected to the Samuel Fischer Professorship of Literature at Berlin's Frie University, a post previously filled, as his publicist informs us, by Nobel and Booker prize winners; and Tarun Tejpal who has made it (phew!) to the long list of renowned (but naturally!) French litaward, Prix Femina Etranger in the foreign novel category for his debut The Alchemy of Desire (translated as Loin De Chandigarh or Far from Chandigarh). But a writer who will probably go down in history as having been paid the highest advance by an Indian publisher (apart from Vikram Seth, of course) is a jailbird called Babloo Srivastava. His publisher, Satish Verma, reportedly paid a whoppingRs 60 lakh for the hawala king's memoirs, Adhoora Khwab (Unfinished Dream) on kidnappings and such like.
It may not amount to Babloo's advance, but former English prof-turned-astrologer Bejan Daruwala's earnings in all likelihood exceed those of the editor who discovered him: Khushwant Singh. Full Circle's Shekhar Malhotra, who persuaded Daruwala out of retirement on Goa's beaches, says the hefty royalties/advance for his annual forecaster go to him in monthly instalments.
