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Journalism of Courage
Musing on his emotional distance from writing about young love as a 37-year-old father of one, Durjoy Dutta, in conversation with author Kiran Manral at JLF 2023, said that he doesn’t want to sound inauthentic by penning young characters he can’t relate to anymore, turning to older characters reflective of his life and relationships today.
“I earlier used to say my books are successful because they’re relatable, now I no longer say that,” said Dutta, adding that his subject matter has evolved with his latest novel When I Am With You, which deals with a 28-year-old single mother who is balancing entrepreneurship and a new relationship. “I can’t write about young people falling in love the way I could earlier.”
Imposter syndrome plagues Dutta’s writing every day, with him saying that his early success at 21 with Of Course I Love You! made him doubt other people’s tastes when they complimented his writing. “I used to say, ‘You only like my book because you haven’t read other books!’ But that experience has made me a good judge of why other people’s book do or don’t do well,” he said.
Dutta ended the talk with talking about his early influences which started with Enid Blyton, graduated to John Grisham and Stephen King, and eventually tackled his parents insistence on ‘literary fiction’ like Rushdie which he “didn’t get at first.”
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