In the month of May in Delhi, when temperatures routinely touch a high of 45 degrees Celsius, more than 600 people turned up to listen to Vikram Seth read from his new work, An Equal Music. The book launch, hosted by his publisher, Penguin India, made to all the major newspapers (and even some of the television networks). Aveek Sarkar, head of Penguin's India part, the Ananda Bazaar Patrika, flew down from Calcutta to welcome the author to the reading.
The Everest Hotel
In July, India Ink, the most recent entrant on the Indian (English) publishing scene, and best known as Arundhati Roy's publisher, launched a (yes!) reprint of Allan Sealy's book The Trotter-Nama (earlier published by Penguin India). The launch —also with a reading —took place at a five star hotel and was followed by the mandatory cocktails. Attendance was once again in the hundreds. And publishers are hoping that the book, in its new and attractive cover, will once again be reviewed in newspapers and magazines. Good sales are expected, and the strategy is to catch the "new reader", more so in the wake of the success of Sealy's The Everest Hotel.
The Everest Hotel was the first recipient of the new, and prestigious, Crossword Literary Award for fiction written in English. And certainly, the award boosted sales. But the question remains: is there a new reader around? Has the book buying public actually increased? Are people buying more variety of books today than they used to, say, 10 years ago? Is there in fact a boom in Indian writing in English? Difficult to say. Does writing ever undergo a boom? Writers write. Sometimes they get published. At other times, they don't.