In February 2011 Karunatilaka made his authorial debut with Chinaman, a novel published by Random House, India. Prior to this publication, Karunatilaka had written advertisements, rock songs and travel stories.

The prize’s shortlist included five other titles: Bharathipura by U.R. Ananthamurthy (translated by Susheela Punitha), A Street in Srinagar by Chandrakanta (translated by Manisha Chaudhry), Monkey-man by Usha K.R, The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair and The Story that Must Not Be Told by Kavery Nambisan.

Jury chairperson Ira Pande explained the judges’ thought process: “The jury unanimously chose this year’s winner. While this fact in itself is a historic one for book juries are notorious for spirited battles over lists and winners, let me add that this year’s winner is also important for several other reasons. The winning title is a brilliant narration of all that is both great and sad about South Asia and in that sense it brings a world to the reader that needs to be seen outside this region. No longer are novelists who write of violence, breakdown of communities and the old way of life able to speak the whole truth about our world.”

This article first appeared HERE.

Although there is no official announcement yet, the sources told IANS that the British Indian novelist may keep away from the Jan 20-24 event scheduled at the Diggi Palace Hotel.

The sources gave no details but spoke as Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot told Home Minister P. Chidambaram in Delhi that Rushdie's presence could spark off trouble.

Muslim groups have come out against the visit by Rushdie, whose fourth novel, "The Satanic Verses" (1988), led to major protests from Muslims in many countries after a 'fatwa' by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.

Organisers of the popular Jaipur Literature Festival admitted that Rushdie "will not attend" the first day of the event.

He was supposed to reach Jaipur Jan 20 and address two literary sessions.

The event's producer Sanjay Roy said in a two-line statement: "Rushdie will not be in India Jan 20 due to a change in his schedule. The festival stands by its invitation to the author."

The organisers were mum over whether he will attend the festival or not.

Nearly 250 authors from the world, including celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, will take part in the festival.

Gehlot told reporters in Delhi: "We don't have any official communication when he is coming... but minorities in the state are protesting against it. I have informed him (Chidambaram) about the situation.

"It is a famous festival. I am sure organisers ... would not want anything to happen that affects the whole festival. I hope we work out something so that things don't turn ugly.

"We can't prevent (Rushdie) from coming to India since he is a PIO (Person of Indian Origin) and PIOs don't need visa," said Gehlot, who also met Law and Minorities Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid.

Many Muslim leaders in Rajasthan have asked the government not to let Rushdie enter India.

After Darul Uloom Deoband -- the country's biggest Islamic seminary -- demanded that the writer be denied entry, some leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) minority cell in Rajasthan echoed the view.

Darul Uloom vice chancellor Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani, who had urged the Indian government to cancel Rushdie's visa, Tuesday demanded an apology from the writer for hurting Muslim sentiments.

"Rushdie has hurt Muslim sentiments. He should apologise to the entire Muslim ummah (society) for his blasphemous remarks against Islam and the Prophet. Only then we can allow him to travel to India," Nomani told IANS over phone from Deoband in Uttar Pradesh.

The Man Booker prize winning writer had earlier visited India in 2000 for a Commonwealth writers' forum, and in 2007 the Jaipur Literature Festival despite widespread protest.

Through the week, fans and liberals voiced anguish over attempts to bar Rushdie from visiting India.

In a hard-hitting message on Twitter, journalist and commentator Vir Sanghvi said: "Don't take power away from the people and give it to the bullies."

Last year, an invitation to Rushdie for the Harud festival in Kashmir that was later aborted, had triggered similar flak.

Rahul Pandita, the author of "Hello, Bastar", described the tirade against Rushdie as "shame, shame, shame!"

"This is the real face of the Congress party," Pandita said on social media. Foreign correspondent Seema Sirohi felt "the large Indian state was too weak to protect one man".

Source: (IANS) Jaipur/New Delhi

My favorite British author, Jane Austen, has also been transposed into contemporary popular cinema. Though it may shock the likes of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the outrageously snobby matriarch of Mr. Darcy’s family in “Pride and Prejudice,” first published in 1813, the people in Austen’s novels have much in common with similarly imaginary individuals in far-away India of the early 21^st century. Obstacles arising from issues of wealth and social identity—as well as the differences between new money and old inherited status—frequently provide the grist for drama. Family histories and honor can crush fledgling romances. The heroic suffer for the sins of their relatives. Proud or wealthy parents worry whether their children will be truly respected or valued by outsiders. Characters debate the appropriateness of long-assumed betrothals and the ability of love to unite disparate families. Those who step out of line face a lifetime of gossip and withering looks, or being outcast or even killed off.

The earliest Indian film adaptation of a Jane Austen novel I have been able to find is “Kandukondain Kandukondain,” a contemporary Tamil adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility,” released in 2000. This story of an all-female family suddenly impoverished by the death of a male relative (father in the novel, grandfather in the film) quietly but firmly emphasizes the sadness of downsizing a life of familiarity and respectability to one of anxiety and constraint. In Austen’s novel, the only way out of (relative) poverty for the Dashwood daughters is marriage; in the film, both the young women and their widowed mother must brave the working world. In both stories, the women find satisfaction in their decisions. The timeless tension between love and pragmatics remains, with one of the daughter’s love interests choosing the interests of his pocket over those of his heart.

One fascinating change to the original story is the replacement of an existing but highly undesired engagement with career ambitions. Instead of a commitment made to another person in youthful indiscretion, we see a character agonizing over his vocation, something he chose carefully with much thought and heart. It’s a very appropriate update, highlighting how work instead of a person can so easily become one’s life partner and how commitment to one’s own principles and desires can be an essential feature of growing up.

During a recent re-watch of Gurinder Chadha’s “Bride and Prejudice,” I was delighted to realize how much teeth this 2004 film really has. The egos of the principal characters (Lalita Bakshi/Elizabeth Bennet and Will Darcy/Fitzwilliam Darcy) are intact but their rounds of barbed comments focus as much on imperialist history and 21^st century globalizing cultures as on personal or family pride. Family members dispersed across a few English counties are updated to cover the Indian diaspora and multinational business holdings. Instead of a lovable filmi maa, Mrs. Bakshi is a perfect contextualization of Mrs. Bennet, a mother who is determined to secure good futures for her daughters in the only way she knows how, no matter how ridiculous the effort makes her (or them) appear. She is utterly absurd, but she means well. Overall, “Bride and Prejudice” does not feel exactly like a Bollywood film, but it certainly has a lot of fun playing with filmi conventions—dance, weddings, big homes and families—and using them to emphasize or transpose elements of Austen’s story.

“Aisha” (2010) is an adaptation of “Emma,” perhaps equally influenced by “Clueless,” the 1995 Hollywood modernization of the same story. As with the other two films discussed, this is an unapologetically heroine-centered movie; unlike the others, the heroine lives in a world of extreme privilege and zero risk. Centering a story on a young woman who is difficult to like and almost impossible to empathize with was an interesting gamble by the filmmakers, and out of it they created a subtle, stylish lesson in the importance of investing in understanding the people close to you.

As with the original heroine, Aisha lacks the typical Bollywood emotional heart centered on a mother, and it can be argued that for all her social and material trappings, Aisha is very lonely and doesn’t know how to have mature relationships that involve considered give and take. Emma and Aisha both see the world through self-colored glasses, more out of habit than willful selfishness. The film seems to quietly question whether Aisha and her ilk are what modern youth-oriented culture, mostly unrestricted by parental demands or requests, is creating.

The bite of Austen’s comedies of manners is not a particularly common tone in popular Indian cinema, and this contrast in attitude and intention is one of the features of Indian adaptations of Austen that I enjoy most. The ingredients in the stories have an appropriateness and relevance to the new settings that enable them to work equally well in service of different priorities. There is something about the emotional content, the reality of human feelings, that underlies them both and enables smooth translation into an environment of storytelling and entertainment that loves a great romance.

This article first appeared HERE.

I first encountered Sacred Games's main character, Inspector Sartaj Singh, in a short story included in Vikram Chandra's collection, Love and Longing in Bombay.

It was an intriguing tale - about a policeman and a gangster who is holed up in an impregnable bunker. It ended quite abruptly and I felt cheated.

Seven years later, Vikram Chandra served up a big fat novel starring Inspector Sartaj, the gangster and dozens of other compelling characters.

The book is so garish, so over the top and so deliciously readable that all that wait seemed worthwhile. (I know nobody had asked me to wait.)

The themes are familiar: the Bombay underworld, Bollywood actors, slums, spiritual gurus, male potency, plastic surgery, bad marriages.

There isn't even a half-hearted attempt at political correctness, everybody is just nasty. And most of them die in horrible ways. It's like a soap opera for people who don't watch soap operas, a thriller for readers with literary pretensions, and a literary novel for those addicted to cheap thrills.

Waiting for a sequel.

THE GRIP OF CHANGE BY P SIVAKAMI

Translated from Tamil by activist and author P Sivakami, The Grip of Change is that rare thing - a fast-paced rural novel.

Some might think that The Grip of Change is more of a Dalit manifesto than a work of literature. They would be wrong.

It might be brutally realistic, chest thumping-ly political, but at its heart Grip is a fascinating story about growing up poor in rural India.

Sivakami portrays her characters with genuine empathy but doesn't shy away from pointing out the futility of their struggles as they try to ape the lives of their own oppressors. I have never seen the machinations of grassroot politics dramatised with such verve.

What makes The Grip of Change even more special is a short sequel titled Author's Note, in which Sivakami takes a knife to her own work and dissects it with the hands of her own protagonist. Why did she choose to edit out certain bits of the story, how did she arrive at those decisions, were those decisions merely artistic or steeped in her own prejudices?

A brilliant novel about family, class and the process of writing novels.

THE HARAPPA FILES BY SARNATH BANERJEE

I was never a big graphic novel fan but I realised what I had been missing when I read Sarnath Banerjee's Corridor.

The Harappa Files is his third graphic novel although he insists on calling it "loosely connected commentaries".

Aphrodisiacs, eccentrics, bookworms, psychic plumbers all feature heavily in Sarnath's book. He can draw precise, beautiful images, but sometimes he just takes images from adverts and newspapers and incorporates them into his story.

His sense of humour, which has been described as "post-humour" (by a fictional magazine of his own invention), is at odds with mainstream sensibilities and sometimes readers are not sure if they should laugh.

Sarnath does urban landscape like nobody else; he takes us into back alleys, barges into tiny apartments in high rises or, page after page, stays stuck in a traffic jam.

His novels are profound hoaxes, sometimes pretending to be manifestos drawn up by bureaucratic committees, sometimes reports compiled by archaeologists.

But it doesn't take him long to return to the very familiar motif of a proud mother marching her two sons to a karate class. Sarnath is considered a leading conceptual artist as well but that, as one of his characters might say, is outside of the scope of this inquiry.

KAI CHAND THAY SAR-E-AASMAN BY SHAMS UR REHMAN FARUQI

When Urdu's most well known and vocal literary critic Shams ur Rehman Faruqi turned to fiction, the sound of knives being sharpened in Urdu literary circles was audible across the border.

But after a collection of short stories, Sawar (The Rider), which comprised brilliant tales woven around the private lives of classical Urdu poets, his first novel Kai Chand Thay Sar-e-Aasman has established him as the finest Urdu novelist of his generation.

Mostly set in the 19th century, Kai Chand tells the story of Wazir Khanum, the mother of famous Urdu poet Dagh Dehlvi. But it's not just one life that this novel sets out to capture, it paints an entire civilisation.

I didn't read it out of nostalgia for Muslim India or for the love of classical Urdu but for the fact that it's a true page turner.

It draws you in with its hypnotic language, and then takes you on to an epic journey and soon you are inhabiting a world that you don't want to leave. This one definitely belongs with the classics of Urdu fiction; and there aren't many of those.

AFTERTASTE BY NAMITA DEVIDYAL

In the past few years, fiction and nonfiction books about the "new India" seem to have become a mini industry.

What distinguishes Namita Devidyal's fictional debut Aftertaste is that it's an old fashioned rip-roaring yarn, a family saga with money, lust and entrepreneurship at its heart.

As the matriarch of a Marwari family goes into a coma, her sons and daughters-in-law come out to play and fight over the mithai (sweets) empire she has built. Namita made her name with her seminal The Music Room, a lyrical music memoir which became one of the most popular books about classical music in India.

In Aftertaste she creates a fast-paced narrative that's as addictive as that mithai from your hometown. New India can learn a lot from an old=fashioned tale about making mithai and money.

Mohammed Hanif's second novel Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti was published earlier this year.

This article first appeared HERE.

New book follows life of Jassi Sidhu, a Canadian woman allegedly murdered by her family in India for the crime of following her own heart.

You can kill a person, but not an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. And they can spring from the most unlikely of sources.

A new book, Justice for Jassi, writ-ten by Vancouver-based authors Fabian Dawson, deputy editor-in-chief of The Province, and Harbinder Singh Sewak, traces the life story of Jassi Sidhu, a beautiful, though unassuming, Canadian woman from Maple Ridge who was murdered in India allegedly at the hands of her family.

The book, the first written about her tragic story, documents how she fell in love and secretly married a man her family would not approve of.

It is narrated from the perspective of Jassi's surviving husband Mithu, who since his wife's death a decade ago has refused to remarry and has continued fighting to see justice done for his wife.

The authors scoured through thousands of police and court records in Canada and India, as well as hours of tape interviewing officials. The book attempts to demonstrate how her mother and uncle allegedly orchestrated Jassi's murder from their home in Maple Ridge, where they continue to live, despite being charged in an Indian court for conspiracy to commit murder.

Since the time of Jassi's murder in 2000, extradition laws between Canada and India have continued to pre-vent the pair from being sent to India to face sentencing.

Though Canada's legal system has not given Jassi any justice, her followers on the Internet - there are thousands of people who have signed the petition at www.justiceforjassi.com - have worked to spread her message and keep her legacy alive, if only to give her redemption.

Her message is as simple as it is pure and potent. Love is the only thing worth living for.

And dying for.

Jassi believed so completely in love that at the tender age of 25 she sacrificed her life for it.

Her willingness to stand alone, knowing the dangers that lurked at every turn, makes for an inspirational tale. It is as epic as that of Terry Fox's - another young Canadian who grew up near Jassi - and who made a solitary journey only to meet death head-on at a young age.

Jassi's real-life story is as dramatic as any version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Understanding what drove this optimistic and innocent young British Columbia-born woman to fight this harrowing battle is at the heart of Justice for Jassi.

Despite the death threats she faced from her family, she never wavered from her commitment to be with the man she loved.

She broke out of her confinement at home, borrowed money and escaped to India to be with him - leaving every-thing she knew in her life behind.

While in India she resorted to cloak-and-dagger measures to get away from vengeful assassins, even using Valium to sedate family members in order to sneak Mithu into her home.

In an uncertain world, with threats coming from her family and the scent of danger everywhere, love served as Jassi's light.

She fought for it, right to the very brink and eventually over it.

Justice for Jassi gives readers access for the first time into her final chilling moments, as pieced together by count-less hours of police interviews.

It was June 2000, and Jassi had been kidnapped by a group of killers. They had just left Mithu for dead in front of her. Jassi was badly injured and hysterical.

Nearby the killers drank and continued to threaten her. They had her locked away in a remote farm-house in the darkness of the Indian countryside. She was defenceless and subject to their whims.

In those final moments Jassi realized her end was near. The killers tortured her and sliced her apart with a sword.

But as the authors write, even during the final moments, Jassi's belief never strayed, as evidenced by the discovery of her body 33 hours after her death.

Her eyes were still open when her life closed.

This article first appeared HERE.

"Redemption Rain provides a tenderly perceptive yet penetratingly measured depiction of the contemplative’s path on which spirituality, history, culture, and ecology congregate in unambiguous communal celebration. . . Here then is a poetry that speaks directly to our sense of human belonging, our recognition of smallness within vastness, our experiential encounters with love and loss." — S Rose-Ann Walker, The University of Trinidad and Tobago

About the Author

Jennifer Rahim is the author of three volumes of poetry, Mothers Are Not the Only Linguists (1992), Between the Fence and the Forest (2002), and Approaching Sabbaths (2009), and a collection of short stories, Songster and Other Stories (2007). Approaching Sabbaths was awarded the 2010 Casa de las Américas Prize for best book in the category Caribbean Literature in English or Creole. Rahim is a senior lecturer in literature at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago.

This book provides, for the first time, a bilingual edition ( both in Tamil and English) of forty poems by R. Cheran. Written over a period of three decades, the poems cover a range of experiences, including love, war, despair, hope and diaspora.

Cheran is considered one of the finest contemporary poets in Tamil and his poetry is read widely in North America, Europe  and South Asia. Both modernist and unfailingly lyrical, his work is a remarkable blend of tradition and innovation.

The forty poems in this volume have been translated and introduced by Chelva Kanaganayakam.

About The Author 

R. Cheran is currently an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology at the University of Windsor. His publications include History and Imagination: Tamil Culture in the Global Context (2007), New Demarcations: Essays in Tamil Studies (2009), Pathways of Dissent: Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka (2010), and Empowering Diasporas: Dynamics of Post War Tamil Transnational Politics (2011).

About Chelva Kanaganayakam

Chelva, is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto and is also the Director for the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. His major publications include Moveable Margins: The Shifting Spaces of Canadian Literature (2005), Counterrealism and Indo Anglian Fiction (2002), Lutesong and Lament: Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka (2001), Dark Antonyms and Paradise: The Poetry of Rienzi Crusz (1997), Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and Their World (1995), and Structures of Negation: The Writings of Zulfikar Ghose (1993).

This book will be featured at the TSAR Fall Book Launch November 22, 2011. Click HERE for more details on this event.

Set in suburban Toronto, New Jersey, Texas and India, they draw out the conflicts in three generations of Indians whose lives interconnect even as they straddle the old and the new. What we sense is both the anguish of loss and the thrill of discovery. Viswanathan's quiet prose imparts powerful emotions that ring true and her rendering of cultural clash is truly skilful and nuanced.

The depiction of her characters’ interior lives is so full and vital that they breathe and walk off the page. The reader is drawn in and completely absorbed into her world of transitions.

“Whether she is writing about North America or India, a middle aged musician or a young boy, Latha Viswanathan's prose is unfailingly vivid, tender and intelligent, full of sensual details and pungent insights.Lingering Tide is a lovely, generous collection.”
—Margot Livesey, Author of Criminals

“Viswanathan writes so incisively and so intensely and so beautifully about what she refers to as this life, this moment, that readers owe her a debt almost even before they have read a single word. Her stories focus with lazer-like intensity on our shape-shifting culture and, as they do so, define it.”
—Alan Cheuse, Author of The Grandmother's Club

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Latha Viswanathan has worked as a journalist, copywriter, editor and teacher in India, London, Manila, Montreal, Toronto and the United States. These stories have appeared in major American literary magazines and won awards. Her work received a grant from the Texas Commission of the Arts in Fiction, was published in Best New Stories from the South and broadcast on National Public Radio. She currently lives and writes in Houston.

This book is featured on the TSAR Fall Book Launch.  Click HERE to see details of this event!

“Only Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha could concoct the secret recipe for Love Cake. One layer of escaped working class girl from Worcester, MA; one layer of long lost Tamil woman returning to her Sri Lankan roots; sweet cream of sexy queer femme on top; unexpected bite into her bittersweet love & trouble triumph healing rebellion. No one knows quite how she makes it; just that we can’t get enough.”

—Aya De Leon, Director June Jordan’s Poetry for the People, UC Berkeley

“Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's Love Cake is a book I want to carry with me when I need to remember my body, to remember our ancestors, to rebuild home. Leah's poems are rebel songs and love songs that bear witness and fight back. Love Cake is as miraculous, as mean, as stunning as every queer brown girl who survives.”

—Qwo-Li Driskill, author of Walking with Ghosts: Poems

About the Author

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a Worcester-raised, Toronto-matured, Oakland-based queer Sri Lankan writer, performer, and teacher. She is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America’s only touring cabaret of queer and trans people of colour performing artists. She is a commissioned performer with Sins Invalid, the national performance organization of queer people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Her onewoman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured throughout North America. The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies. She writes regularly for Bitch, Colorlines, Hyphen, Left Turn and Make/Shift magazines. She is one of Feminist Press’s 2010 “40 Feminists Under 40 Who Are Shaping the Future” and a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee.