Sunrise, Sunset
It’s a record of sorts—at 96, the unstoppable Khushwant Singh is putting the finishing touches to his latest novel, Sunset Club. The record-holder, of course, is Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who published his Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse in 1997, when he was nearly 100. But unlike Niradbabu’s last book, a meditation on the decline of western civilisation, Khushwant has decided to stick to what he does best: a light-hearted story about a group of aged cronies and their preoccupations, including their sex lives/ fantasies. It is slated to be out in December 2010 or early 2011. All Khushwant will say is that the book’s so different from anything else that no one can accuse him of plagiarism!
The Pen Crawls
Is there a retirement age for novelists? Although Mulk Raj Anand was nearly 99 when he died, his last novel, Private Life of an Indian Prince, was published in 1953, when he was 48. Even his monumental autobiographical project began in his fifties and left incomplete while he was in sixties or early seventies. Raja Rao lived till he was almost 98, but his novel-writing was long over. His last work, The Great Indian Way, a biography of Gandhi, was published when he was 90. R.K. Narayan’s last fictional work, Grandmother’s Tale, was self-published in 1992, when he was 86. In contrast, you have Harry Bernstein, who wrote his first novel, The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that broke Barriers at 97!
Order Of Slapstick
Our award for the most unsaleable title of the month goes to “child specialist” Dr Sunil Vaid’s guide to good parenting: Learn to Slap your Child!
