To do that ... I happen to write!

Friday 17 February 2012

Getting over the Famous Fives!

I was recently listening to one of the TED talks titled "Danger of a single story" in which Chimanmanda starts with the fact that she grew up reading American novels and thus when she began writing, her stories set in Africa too had white girl with blue eyes as protagonist which clearly were not truly African stories!

The moment I listened to this - all the books I have read immediately flashed across my mind. Keeping aside the non-fiction books, the only works of fiction by an Indian author or about India I remember reading are The Guide by RK Narayan, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, The sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lehri and Glorious Gharwal by Ganesh Saili. Life of Pi by Yann Martel can too be loosely classified in this category given that a bit of it is based in India. Moreover, I am astonished with the fact that I can't recall much from either the Sea of Poppies or the Interpreter of Maladies.