Equally lucrative is the market for picture-books in Germany. Publishing houses are hard at work repackaging the time-tested themes of sex and heritage into coffee-tablers that seem to owe as much to world-class printing technology as to scholarship. But The Nehrus: Personal Histories by Mushirul Hasan sheds light on a mystery that's long been debated in Delhi's salons: did Indira Gandhi really have a nose job done? When a heckler broke her nose at an election rally in Orissa in 1967, Mrs G leapt at the chance to reshape her worst feature. But she confessed later that "the doctors treating her were not trained in plastic surgery". The pictures, though, tell a different story: her nose seems at least two inches shorter after that fortuitous accident.
There was only one way out for Random House India. With the deadline for launching their first titles fast approaching and no writers of even middling repute near, they resorted to the oldest trick in the publishing world: poach from other stables. It proved easier than expected: the first author to walk in was Manju Kapur, bringing with her a new novel HarperCollins was going to publish next month.
