Indian popular fiction for BOOKSELLER

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Saturday, 14 May 2011 06:12

Article that appeared in THE UK's 'BOOKSELLER' magazine (June 2009) SOMEONE LIKE ME When in India, I am often asked: "So when are you going to win the Booker?". I reply that this is unlikely because I write commercial, not literary, fiction. "Chick lit" they respond, with what I think is a sneer. I respond by saying that commercial fiction is a broad church, rattling off a string of respectable names: Kate Atkinson, Joanna Trollope, Marian Keyes. But, in India, I get blank looks. "Yes, but have any of them won the Booker?" I carry on, undaunted, explaining that there are prizes reserved for various popular fiction genres too. But no one’s heard of them because they aren’t like the Booker which caught the Indian imagination for being colonised so successfully by the country’s literary fiction brigade years ago. Last year was particularly exciting as India’s two biggest publishing houses (Penguin and HarperCollins) each had their own contender, Amitav Ghosh and Aravind Adiga, and the mutual sniping added greatly to the general merriment. Luckily, Indian publishers have relatively recently cottoned onto the commercial potential of popular fiction, openly confessing that the sales of one big-selling paperback can sometimes allow them the luxury of producing an expensive hardback literary title that can only have a minuscule print-run. Respect has come in other forms too. Among authors invited by the British Council for the recent London Book Fair focusing on India were a decent proportion of commercial fiction writers (who write in English as well as in India’s many regional languages). And word is that the Jaipur Literature Festival will, in January 2010, host a panel to discuss, specifically, the phenomenon of Indian commercial fiction, the sales of which are rapidly outstripping those of literary fiction titles, especially among India’s younger, emerging readers. Despite this, and as an Indian writer living in Britain, I can’t help noticing that the genre continues to suffer pariah status in this country, publishers and agents by and large confused by an Asian name attached to a book that doesn’t look like a potential Booker winner. "Hmmm, limited, niche appeal," was a common reaction when I started showing my work around. However, I look around on Britain’s streets and see hundreds of women like me who seem, curiously, to have never earned the right to be present between the pages of a book, let alone allowed onto their covers (unless, of course, they’re draped in saris and looking generally downtrodden). The message from the publishing industry to Asian readers has been clear: "Well, if you really must have characters with your sort of names, do go off and have a little nose around our literary fiction titles."   Isn’t it, in fact, doing all British commercial fiction fans an enormous disservice to suggest that they could not possibly cope with stories about people who don’t share their exact skin tone? Never mind that the preoccupations and passions of most people are often remarkably similar to one another. The book deal with Avon restores my faith considerably. Now what would complete my glow of well-being would be a little pat on the back from just one Indian literary fiction colleague for the hardback cover he never got around to thanking me for.

Last Updated on Thursday, 07 December 2017 11:27