Deep vs Baddies
Move over Batman, Spiderman, Ironman, Birdman (Oops, sorry), SuperSikh is here. Meet 20-something, Elvis-loving, Taliban-hating, turbaned superhero Deep Singh, who is all set to become the new rage among American kids. Created by San Francisco-based Supreet Singh Manchanda, illustrator Amit Tayal and screenwriter Eileen Alden, the multicultural, educated and politically aware avenger takes on the megalomaniac Taliban chief Salar Al Amok, who plans to bomb a girl’s school in Afghanistan. If the plot sounds like the TV headlines, that’s the idea.
A Ship’s Last Leg
Amitav Ghosh fans are in for a treat, to hear him in person, talking about where the Ibis goes next. The reclusive author will give a sneak peek into his much-awaited final book of the Ibis trilogy as part of the ‘Spring Fever’, which starts this weekend at Delhi’s Habitat Centre. Ghosh rarely does book readings, is hardly seen in the lit-fest circuit and is usually extremely shy about revealing his book’s plotlines.
Hobgoblin’s Cave
The other much-awaited book to hit the stores is Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, his first novel in a decade. And hold your breath, it has ogres, elfins, dragons and, to be sure, there is already a controversy brewing. Critics have asked if Ishiguro was entering the fantasy genre, to which he has retorted against this kind of genre-snobbery. His last, Never Let Me Go, left readers wondering if it was sci-fi or not. “Genre-rules should be porous, if not non-existent,” the writer has said.
