Global Indians and their local stories
Global Indians have multiple stories to tell, feels publisher and author David Davidar.
By Ishani Duttagupta, TNN |
Has the veritable global explosion of Indian writing in English changed the contours of the genre? Well, given his experience, publisher and author David Davidar should know.
The man - whose second novel The Solitude of Emperors has recently been published - doesn’t think there’s a separate genre of Indian diaspora writing.
"Indian authors overseas live in different countries and don’t have a similar kind of writing. The good thing is that they have many things to write about. More and more writers of Indian origin are successful and the range is getting broader. The success of Indian writers around the world breeds confidence and the world of global Indian writing gets richer and richer," he avers.
Mr Davidar has himself been living in Toronto for the past couple of years heading the operations of Penguin Books there. And he feels that as a writer, it doesn’t matter whether he’s in Toronto or in Delhi. “The location for me is not important, the book will germinate only when its time has come,” he says.
Perhaps as testimony to that belief, his latest book is set in a traumatic period in the early ‘90s in India. The book, which delves into the theme of religious fundamentalism, is a political novel - a genre he always wanted to experiment with. "In the tradition of George Orwell and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I had always wanted to experiment with this genre. The challenge was that the Mumbai riots - the setting for my book - have been widely covered by media, and the coverage was brilliant. So how was I going to do something new? That’s how the idea of a ‘book within a book’ came about. The story format is classical fiction trying to explore the two viewpoints - extremism and secularism. I have not offered any solutions or taken any standpoint," says Mr Davidar.
He spent 18 months writing the book, including his in-depth research of media coverage of the Mumbai riots as well as various religious texts.
And then, one is tempted to ask, is there a tension between wearing two hats at the same time? Mr Davidar agrees somewhat, saying that being a honcho at a top publishing firm is sometimes a disadvantage for a writer. "The ability to compartmentalise is very tough. As a publisher, I know there are certain pitfalls that a writer faces. However, as a writer the story comes first and demands to be told," he says. And though some of the best Indian writers living in North America are widely dispersed, he finds himself keeping in touch with many of them.
"Amitav Ghosh is in New York and we get together sometimes. Rohinton Mistry who’s also in Toronto is a good friend. Besides, Shauna Singh Baldwin is in Canada while Jhumpa Lahiri is in New York - I’m in touch with them too,” he says. He knows chairman and editor-in-chief of Alfred A Knopf, Sonny Mehta, whom he considers among the world’s most powerful publishers. In the London circuit, he knows Hari Kunzru. “Many of us - writers and publishers of Indian origin - get together sometimes at literary festivals and those are great places for an exchange of ideas,” he says.
The man - whose second novel The Solitude of Emperors has recently been published - doesn’t think there’s a separate genre of Indian diaspora writing.
"Indian authors overseas live in different countries and don’t have a similar kind of writing. The good thing is that they have many things to write about. More and more writers of Indian origin are successful and the range is getting broader. The success of Indian writers around the world breeds confidence and the world of global Indian writing gets richer and richer," he avers.
Mr Davidar has himself been living in Toronto for the past couple of years heading the operations of Penguin Books there. And he feels that as a writer, it doesn’t matter whether he’s in Toronto or in Delhi. “The location for me is not important, the book will germinate only when its time has come,” he says.
Perhaps as testimony to that belief, his latest book is set in a traumatic period in the early ‘90s in India. The book, which delves into the theme of religious fundamentalism, is a political novel - a genre he always wanted to experiment with. "In the tradition of George Orwell and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I had always wanted to experiment with this genre. The challenge was that the Mumbai riots - the setting for my book - have been widely covered by media, and the coverage was brilliant. So how was I going to do something new? That’s how the idea of a ‘book within a book’ came about. The story format is classical fiction trying to explore the two viewpoints - extremism and secularism. I have not offered any solutions or taken any standpoint," says Mr Davidar.
He spent 18 months writing the book, including his in-depth research of media coverage of the Mumbai riots as well as various religious texts.
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And then, one is tempted to ask, is there a tension between wearing two hats at the same time? Mr Davidar agrees somewhat, saying that being a honcho at a top publishing firm is sometimes a disadvantage for a writer. "The ability to compartmentalise is very tough. As a publisher, I know there are certain pitfalls that a writer faces. However, as a writer the story comes first and demands to be told," he says. And though some of the best Indian writers living in North America are widely dispersed, he finds himself keeping in touch with many of them.
"Amitav Ghosh is in New York and we get together sometimes. Rohinton Mistry who’s also in Toronto is a good friend. Besides, Shauna Singh Baldwin is in Canada while Jhumpa Lahiri is in New York - I’m in touch with them too,” he says. He knows chairman and editor-in-chief of Alfred A Knopf, Sonny Mehta, whom he considers among the world’s most powerful publishers. In the London circuit, he knows Hari Kunzru. “Many of us - writers and publishers of Indian origin - get together sometimes at literary festivals and those are great places for an exchange of ideas,” he says.
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