2010: An action-packed year for literature

Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was the unlikely newsmaker of the year as his memoir “Keeping the Faith” criticised the policies of his own party ‘the CPI-M’ and the Left Front and recounted the events that led to his expulsion from the party.

Chatterjee also blamed CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat’s “arrogance” for the party’s poll debacles in his book.

India-born Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry was also in the news after his book “Such a Long Journey” was withdrawn by Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University from BA syllabus in September after Shiv Sena’s student wing alleged that it contained derogatory remarks about Maharashtrians. Later in an open letter,the writer expressed “profound dismay at the expeditious decision by the university.”

India’s voracious writer-columnist Khushwant Singh continued his passion for writing and came out with four books during the year “The Sunset Club”,”City Improbable”,”Absolute Khushwant” and “Why I Supported the Emergency”.

A Delhi couple falling in love while waiting for a traffic light to turn green in the capital figured in one of the several stories of celebrated British writer Jeffrey Archer’s new book “And Thereby Hangs a Tale” that had a special India launch. The author was in India for the launch.

Daman Singh,the writer daughter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,came out with her second novel “The Sacred Grove” and disclosed her plans to write a book about her parents during an interview.

India was the guest country at the 23rd Turin International Book Fair in Italy from May 13-17.

Buoyed by the success of IIM alumni Karan Bajaj’s debut work “Keep off the Grass”,HarperCollins undertook a unique and massive marketing campaign for the first print run of an impressive 50,000 copies of his second novel,a thriller called “Johnny Gone Down”.

Rana Dasgupta’s “Solo” won the Commonwealth Writers Prize,”Fault Lines” fetched the Goldman Sachs Award for Best Book for Raghuram Rajan and Manu Joseph’s “Serious Men” bagged the Hindu Literary Award.

Three cookbooks by Westland Ltd,”Flash in the Pan: What to Cook and How”,”How the Banana Goes to Heaven” and “Hajra’s Recipes of Life,for Life” were named by Gourmand as the best cookbooks from India.

Works of six Indians figured in the longlist of the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize. The selected books are “Way to Go” (Upamanyu Chatterjee),”Dahanu Road” (Anosh Irani),”Serious Men” (Manu Joseph),”The Thing About Thugs” (Tabish Khair),”Tiger Hills” (Sarita Mandanna) and “Monkey-man” (Usha K R).

The shortlist will be announced in February and the winner of the prize,which carries an award of USD 30,000,will be announced on March 17 in Hong Kong.

Works by three Indian authors were shortlisted for the USD 50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian literature,a newly-instituted literary award given annually to writers on themes such as culture,politics and history of the region.

These are Manju Kapur’s “The Immigrant”,Neel Mukherjee’s “A Life Apart” and Amit Chaudhuri’s “The Immortals”.

The winner of the first DSC Prize will be declared at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2011. The prize will be awarded for the best work of fiction pertaining to the South Asian region,published in English,including translations into English.

Renowned Malayalam poet-writer O N V Kurup was honoured with the 43rd Jnanpith Award during the year.

Eight books of poetry,four novels,three collections of short stories,four works of criticism,one travelogue,an autobiography and a play were among the literary works in 22 languages that won the Sahitya Akademi Awards for 2010.

The poets honoured are Aurobindo Uzir (Bodo),Arun Sakhardande (Konkani),Gopi Narayan Pradhan (Nepali),Vanita (Punjabi),Mangat Badal (Rajasthani),Mithila Prasad Tripathi (Sanskrit),Laxman Dubey (Sindhi) and Sheen Kaaf Nizam (Urdu).

The novelists who have won the award are Bani Basu (Bengali),Esther David (English),Dhirendra Mehta (Gujarati) and M Borkanya (Manipuri). Uday Prakash (Hindi),Nanjil Nadan (Tamil) and Manoj (Dogri) have won the awards for their short story collections. Keshada Mahanta (Assamese),Rahamath

Tarikere (Kannada),Basher Bashir (Kashmiri) and Ashok R. Kelkar (Marathi) won the awards for their books of criticism.

The other winners are the former Union Minister M.P. Veerendra Kumar (Malayalam) for his travelogue,Pathani Pattnaik (Oriya) for his autobiography and playwright Bhogla Soren (Santhali).

Leading publishers HarperCollins,Penguin,Rupa,Roli,Sage,MacMillan among others had several successes.

“The year 2010 is coming to a close and we are yet again celebrating with multiple successes this year.

HarperCollins India has seen growth and remarkable sales figures in different categories and genres. A lot of our new imprints like Collins Business and Harper (the imprint for young adult series) continue to grow stronger with every new release,” Lipika Bhushan,marketing manager of HarperCollins-India,said.

The Jaipur Literature Festival 2010 brought together writers and artists from across continents,cultures,forms and genres including Vikram Chandra,Alexander McCall Smith,Hanif Kureishi,O P Valmiki,Wole Soyinka,Stephen Frears,Roberto Calasso,Tina Brown,Shashi Tharoor,Gulzar,Tarun Tejpal,Arvind K Mehrotra,Girish Karnad,Roddy Doyle,Lawrence Wright and Niall Ferguson.

The festival also hosted writers from Pakistan,including Salima Hashmi,Ali Sethi,Asma Jahangir and Shoukat Shoro. There were over 170 authors attending the festival with a healthy mix of the east with the west.

Over 30,000 people attended the many sessions and workshops during the course of the festival. These included high commissioners and ambassadors and cultural heads of international missions,delegates from Mumbai,Kolkata and Delhi,publishers,students,University professors and guests of sponsors and supporters of the festival.

The year will also be remembered as the famous Hay Literary Festival had its first Indian edition in Kerala in November. The three-day extravaganza of literature and performances themed on literary genres saw the presence of Irish musician and writer Bob Geldof,filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and authors Vikram Seth William Dalrymple and O N V Kurup among others.

The year also saw the passing away of P Lal,founder of one of India’s oldest creative publishing houses Writers Workshop,in Kolkata.