Timeless twins

Words WORTH

Vintage's Classic Twins is a carefully put together series that pairs the old and the new to thought-provoking effect'.

As any truly inclusive book-lover will know, great works of literature seem to call out to each other across time, space and genre. On the surface, there may appear to be little that links R K Narayan's Malgudi with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Macondo, but there is a minor similarity (in how self-contained each of these fictional settings is) that can, for a reader who happens to be in the right mood, create a logical progression from one work to the other.

If you've enjoyed a particular book, it often takes just a simple nudge for you to discover other worlds that are stimulating in similar ways. Considering that we live in the age of online communities like Shelfari which enable readers to trade recommendations based on common likes and dislikes, it's surprising that it took so long for an idea like the Vintage Classic Twins to take shape. This is an exciting new promotional series based on a simple but brilliant concept: what if an acclaimed modern book were to be paired with an established literary classic that it bears a thematic resemblance to? The connection doesn't have to be very obvious, but it should be strong enough to encourage someone who has read and enjoyed one of the books to try out the other one.

The result: 12 elegantly produced pairings, classified by genre. Some recommendations:

Vintage Fantasy: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami)

The protagonists in both these books begin their fantastical adventures by searching for an animal (Alice's White Rabbit and Toru Okada's missing cat respectively) but soon find themselves drawn into increasingly strange, surreal worlds where nothing is what it seems. Alice falls down a seemingly endless rabbit-hole while Toru spends a lot of his time in deep contemplation at the bottom of a dark well; there are other tantalising connections too, even though the two authors' styles are quite different. If you love Carroll's great fantasy but have never encountered Murakami's work before, this is a good starting point.

Vintage Crime: Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoevsky) and Ripley's Game (Patricia Highsmith)

In a recent interview Bollywood director Sriram Raghavan cited Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov and Highsmith's Tom Ripley as inspirations for the amoral protagonist of his film Johnny Gaddaar "" a man who betrays his accomplices during a heist scheme and then finds that he has to do more unsavoury things just to cover up what has gone before. One wonders if Raghavan had got his hands on Vintage Crime, which similarly connects the two literary anti-heroes. Each of these books takes us into the mind of a man who doesn't rely on a conventional moral code: Raskolnikov convinces himself that his motive for murder is to benefit mankind, while Ripley prefers someone else to do his dirty work...unless, of course, it's absolutely necessary.

Vintage Lust: Tom Jones (Henry Fielding) and The Rachel Papers (Martin Amis)

More than two centuries separate Fielding's bawdy, exuberant romp (published in 1749) from Amis's sexy coming-of-age story (1973), but it's easy to see why these books complement each other so well. They are both humorous, good-natured stories about a charismatic male character and his female conquests, and they are reflections of changing times: while Tom Jones was controversial when it was published, it understandably has nothing as explicit as the lengthy, funny, meticulously detailed sex scene that gives The Rachel Papers its explosive, well, climax.

Vintage Sin: Inferno (Dante Alighieri) and Sabbath's Theatre (Philip Roth)

On Good Friday in the year 1300, Dante finds himself lost in a dark and menacing wood. The ghost of Virgil offers to lead him to safety but the path lies through the terrifying kingdom of Satan. In the underworld, Dante crosses paths with old acquaintances and famous characters from history as he witnesses the sufferings of the damned. Meanwhile, in a parallel universe in the year 1995, 64-year-old puppeteer Mickey Sabbath embarks on a turbulent journey into his past after the death of his mistress. Besieged by the ghosts of those who loved and hated him, he contrives a succession of farcical disasters that take him to the brink of madness and extinction. Two stunning works about journeys, spiritual and physical, towards an idealised woman and, eventually, towards redemption.
(Each set is priced at Rs 395)