Battlefront EU
It's not the domestic market that India's first agency, set up by Osian, is eyeing, nor even high-profile publishers in US and UK. It's the rest of Europe that's beckoning with its untapped potential in translation rights of Indian books, whether French, Italian, German or Spanish. With chartbusters like Tarun Tejpal's Alchemy of Desire and Vikas Swarup's Q&A leading the way, it's those EU markets that the turf battles between Indian publishers and agents will be fought over in the future.
Bad Handwriter
Readers queuing up for autographed copies of Mohsin Hamid's two books, Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, were surprised to see the author signing in block letters. Apparently, the literary star spent a year in school in a class for the learning disabled because of his seeming slowness. It turned out there was nothing wrong with his writing skills except his inability to write legibly in cursive script.
