New writing, AB and Elvis

3 NEW RELEASES

ATLAS 01: NEW WRITING/ART/IMAGE
(Edited by) Sudeep Sen
Aark Arts and Crossword
256 pages

Atlas is a bookzine compendium of cutting-edge contemporary Indian and international writing, edited by Sudeep Sen and advised by an impressive panel of international prize-winning writers and editors including Peter Bradshaw, Kwame Dawes, Girish Karnad, Christopher Merrill, Les Murray, Shashi Tharoor and John Hartley Williams.

It was launched at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai and contains work by eminent authors and poets like Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Kaifi Azmi, Amit Chaudhuri, Keki Daruwalla, Jayanta Mahapatra and Rana Dasgupta.

According to Sen, this is among the first international-standard bookzine publications of its kind to originate from this country. Apart from carrying cutting-edge original and translated creative writing "" poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction, plus occasional in-depth interviews and features "" it includes selected portfolios of artists, photographers and filmmakers.

"It presents the best of contemporary Indian writing to the world and the best of international writing to India and includes very well established writers alongside talented newer ones, he says. The book also marks Crossword's entry into publishing,

ELVIS RAJA
M G Vassanji
Penguin Books India
218 pages
Rs 250

With the mastery of vivid detail, and the ear for the nuances of the voice that have garnered him such admiration, Vassanji weaves 12 haunting tales of transplanted lives, of the traumas of migration, and the bitterness of memory.

In the title story, Diamond meets his college friend Rusty after years, and is faced with a past he had chosen to outgrow and forget. Haunted by the memory of his wife's betrayal, he finds himself trapped in Rusty's world, his shrine to Elvis.

In "When She Was Queen" a young man questions his mother about a rumour that has circulated amongst his older siblings for years: that their father once lost their mother in a poker game. In his quest to comprehend the implications of this rumour, the narrator uncovers an even darker secret.

In "The Expected One", a young African-born Indian visits his ancestral village in drought-stricken Gujarat in search of a wife, and discovers instead an unexpected destiny.

Negotiating between her past and her present in "Her Two Husbands", the widow of a university professor finds herself increasingly a prisoner of the edicts of her new husband's spiritual advisor. And in "She, with Bill and George" a young Indian woman forms unlikely bonds with two men in 1970s Tanzania that reverberate through her life.

AMITABH: THE MAKING OF A SUPERSTAR
Susmita Dasgupta
Penguin Books India
187 pages
Rs 250

What is it that makes Amitabh Bachchan the star he is? Is it his genius as an actor, his ability to connect with the masses and the classes alike, or is it his writers and directors who project him in varied roles?

Did his films in his heyday reflect the angst of his time, or did the y ferment the spirit of anger and rebellion in the first place? Was he really the rebel as his "angry young man" image suggests, or was there a conformist subtext that called for restoration of the status quo? How relevant is Bachchan today?

In this book , Susmita Dasgupta addresses these and othe r questions that lie buried in the trail of glory the star blazed. The author traces the world-view and philosophy that have shaped the films of Bachchan "" from the angry young man of Zanjeer, the tragic antihero of Deewar and the entertainer of Amar Akbar Anthony to his more conservative turns in Mohabbatein and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham.