‘Of Love & Second Chances

Hello & Welcome Back Book Lovers.

Today in our hot seat we feature Debut Author Shreya Prabhu Jindal of ‘ Another Chance at Life’.

An English professor by day and a dreamy author by night, Shreya takes you on a journey of emotions with her new novel and will leave you gasping for more. Her book is very realistic in nature where emotions and relationships are portrayed beautifully and are maturely handled.Her book talks about what happens when you lose the first love of your life.

Articulately  put and well narrated through the protagonist Aditya, Shreya gives you an insight on life after love and the myriad of pressures associated with it and how do you move on.

It is a book to watch out for those looking for something different to read from the clichéd love stores.

To know the author up close and personnel, here is excerpt of her interview with us.

1.  Tell us something about the character ‘Aditya’ that readers will love about him.

Well, I don’t know about the readers, but for me Aditya is an average guy trying to deal with really difficult and tragic situation as best as he can. There is nothing particularly extraordinary about him, except maybe his ability to not look at things in black and white. I think he deals with the constant hatred and mistreatment of his Professor with a lot of compassion and understanding.

   2. Everybody loves a good love story, but your book deals with life after love. What inspired you to write such a story

Well, I think that loss and heartbreak are universal facts of life, but people don’t deal with them in a realistic manner. I have found that many novels and movies which deal with life after love tend to be too sentimental and unrealistic. I wanted to try and write about this in as realistic a manner as possible. But actually, the story for me started when I got the idea for the relationship between Aditya and the professor, Krishnan, not from the love story. The complex, antagonistic, and multi-faceted relationship between the two characters is what I had envisioned first, and the love story sort of got added on to that.

3.  You chose to write from the point of view of a male protagonist for your debut book, as a lot first time female authors prefer to play a safer bet and chose female protagonist. Any particular reason..

Actually, for me, I would find it more difficult to write from woman’s point of view. Over the years, it just so happened that all my favourite literary or film characters have been male. I think because of that, I am a lot more comfortable with the male perspective.

4. One book or movie that you can’t forget..

Harry Potter! I was part of the generation that grew up waiting for the next book to come out, and I will never forget the rush of getting a new Harry Potter novel after a year long wait.

5. The person that inspires you the most

J.K. Rowling! She’s a living example of the classic rags to riches story. The tale of her success is truly inspirational.

6. Any reviews or critique by your readers that really touched your heart

I received one very moving review on Facebook, where the reader said he really enjoyed my work and asked Allah to bless me and my pen. I was very flattered by such high praise!

7. Do you think in this publishing boom scenario, do you feel that authors need to be aggressive and competitive to reach out to readers via various mediums?

I think it has become both easier and harder for aspiring authors. There is a lot of opportunity and demand for young writers now, and it is comparatively far easier to publish a novel than it ever has been before this boom. However, because there are so many books of similar genres being published, it is very easy for a book to be lost among the hundreds of new titles. It is therefore very important for authors to use various mediums, particularly social networks and blogs, to promote their books as aggressively s possible.

8.  Do you think good books make good movies, your thoughts and any plans on the same?

I think with advancing technology it’s becoming increasingly easy to adapt books with a lot of creativity as well as remaining faithful to the spirit of the original. I would love my novel to be adapted into a movie someday. I sort of visualized it as a movie even while writing it, and a lot of people have said it’s very cinematic.

9.Your current reads

I am, sadly, not reading much these days except children’s notebooks! School teaching doesn’t leave you much time. However, I hope that I will be able to read a few more books during the summer.

10.  Pet Peeves

I hate sentimentality in literature and movies. If a dialogue seems too cheesy or over the top, I often stop watching or reading immediately. I like books and movies that deal with emotions with as much realism as possible.

11.   Your favorite city and why

I have lived all over the place, and I love big bustling metros most of all. I think I will always have a soft spot for Mumbai, since that’s where I was born.

Publisher: Penguin India

Price: Rs 199

Signing off for now

Until next time Geeks.

And don’t forget to drop in your comments.

For details and queries write to crosswordconnect@gmail.com

Happy Reading!

Crossword Bookstores.

Award Winner From a Land Far Far Away…

Welcome Back Book Lovers..       

As you know we had The Economist Crossword Book Award held Last month in Mumbai where the winners in various categories of Fiction, Non Fiction, Translation & Popular were announced.

This week we got chatty with  our Fiction Winner, Anuradha Roy  who has beautifully penned the book ‘The Folded Earth’. This is her second book, her first book was ‘An Atlas Of Impossible Longing’ was published in 2008.

Anuradha resides from a small town Ranikhet in North India. She holds a degree from Cambridge and also has been a journalist. Away from the sight and sounds of city life she loves spending hours cooking, walking her Dog Biscoot across the forest and hilly areas of Ranikhet. With lower cell phone coverage’s, slower internet speeds and limited access to post, she enjoys her quiet, slow and semi urban/rural life.

Her first book has also been previously Shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award

Along with her husband, Anuradha runs Publishing Company Permanent Black which publishes books on South Asian history, politics and environment studies.

Small towns hold a myriad of untold stories and unexpected inspirations which at times go unheard and unseen by city folks.We have met a lot of authors who have migrated to a life in small towns and have shun their self away from fast lives and are completely immersed in writing and literature

Read more to know more about Ms Roy..

1.       This year the list of fiction nominees had previous winners, booker nominees. What were your sentiments when your name was announced as the winner of the Fiction Award?

I felt like the wildcard entrant at Wimbledon who came out of nowhere and won the championship.

2.       When and why did you decide to move into the small town of Ranikhet ?

My husband and I moved to Ranikhet in 2001, when we started our own publishing house. We both prefer living where there are forests and hills and we both like the slower rhythms of small town living.

3.       Does the place inspire your writing as well, as your previous books talk a story evolving in small town in North India?

Place is as crucial to the narrative as the characters in both my novels. In both books the places are physically small, but the worlds and histories they contain are anything but small.

4.       A Day in the life of Anuradha Roy?

It’s just the usual kind of day. Only instead of commuting to the office I walk in the forest; instead of buses and cars the roads have foxes and martens; instead of writing up presentations and strategies I write stories. And I design the books Permanent Black publishes.

5.       Favorite Authors

I have no favourite authors. I get obsessed with particular writers and try to read every scrap they’ve written over a few months, and then move on to someone else.

6.       Favorite Musicians

On some days it’s Dire Straits or K.D. Lang, on others it might be Ustad Abdul Karim Khan or Schubert.

7.       Your current read

I’m reading Penelope Fitzgerald, a British writer I had never read before. Her novel, The Bookshop, starts out tongue-in-cheek and light but ends like a Greek tragedy in which all the grandeur has been peeled away to create something very bleak, offering no comfort at all.

8.       Your most quirky habits.

It’s not a habit, it’s a disability of a kind – I can’t tell left from right so I get lost even in cities I’ve known for years and I can’t read maps.

9.       You have also been long listed for the DSC and Man Asia Booker prize. Your sentiments on the same

A lot of people draw up their reading lists from these longlists and shortlists so I’m happy when my book gets nominated for a prize. It means the book will get more widely read and known.

10.   Your views on how has Indian writing evolved in India. Do you feel that there is an outburst in Indian fiction writing?

I feel as if everyone I know is writing a novel. There are new authors and new books everyday. The biggest change has been the huge growth in commercial fiction so that now there are many kinds of novels being written in English in India– ranging from pulp to crime thrillers to literary fiction.

11.   And is English Literature dying in India and is it replaced by Mass Fiction writing?

No, I think they have completely different readerships.

12.   Anything in the pipeline for a 3rd book.                                  

Nothing yet worth talking about.

About ‘The Folded Earth’

In a remote town in the Himalaya, Maya tries to put behind her a time of great sorrow. By day she teaches in a school and at night she types up drafts of a magnum opus by her landlord, a relic of princely India known to all as Diwan Sahib. Her bond with the eccentric scholar and her friendship with a village girl, Charu, seem to offer her the chance of a new life in Ranikhet, where lush hills meet clear skies. As Maya finds out, no refuge is remote or small enough. The world she has come to love, where people are connected with nature, is endangered by the town’s new administration. The impending elections are hijacked by powerful outsiders who sow division and threaten the future of her school. Charu begins to behave strangely, and Maya soon understands that a new boy in the neighbourhood may be responsible for changes in her friend. When Diwan Sahib’s nephew arrives to set up his trekking company on their estate, she is drawn to him despite herself, but his disappearances into the mountains evoke painful echoes of the past. By turns poetic, elegiac and comic, The Folded Earth is a many-layered and powerful narrative about characters struggling with their pasts – a novel that poignantly reveals the strange shapes that India’s religious and social conflicts can assume even on distant mountain tops.

Publisher: Hachette India

Price: Rs 350           

 

Here is the Link of Anuradha Roy’s speech when she won the Fiction award.

Signing Off for Now..

Until Next Time Geeks.

Happy Reading!

Crossword Bookstores