It’s not about competing or not competing with the greats,” says Mridula Koshy, winner of the 2009 Shakti Bhatt Prize, about India’s only book prize for debut writers. “When you’re a new writer, it’s not that you’re necessarily an amateur — the need is for the newness of what you have to say to be recognised. It’s about recognising how literature evolves. So, for writers on the shortlist of this sort of prize, what it does is to allow writers to engage with readers, and — just as important — with other writers.” This year’s Shakti Bhatt Prize shortlist spotlights six writers across a wide range of genres — three first novels, two of them from Pakistan, the biography of one of the subcontinent’s most fiercely political families, a graphic novel set in the Delhi of the Emergency, and a mesmerising food-and-travel odyssey. With Mahesh Dattani, Kalpana Swaminathan and Ruchir Joshi as the judges, this promises to be closely fought. Shakti Bhatt, the talented and energetic editor who died tragically young, believed that good writing crosses genres and national boundaries — and this year’s shortlist more than delivers the goods for readers.
Home Boy, H M Naqvi (Random House)
H M Naqvi’s swaggering debut novel follows the (mis)fortunes of three young Pakistanis in the before-and-after world of 9/11 America. Their Wall Street jobs and comfortably cushioned lives fall apart in the wake of the terror attacks, and Naqvi chronicles all of this with flair and black humour. Perhaps the best thing about Home Boy is Naqvi’s ear for New York and immigrant accents, and his ability to shuttle with ease between the rhythms of Lahore life and the fast-paced, fluctuating and often brutal demands of Manhattan in an age of siege. Though Home Boy falters in its second half, this still remains an intelligent and sharply comic look at the politics of race and culture in today’s riven world.
Following Fish, Samanth Subramanian (Penguin India)
From the hilsa to the perfect toddy shop meen curry, Samanth Subramanian tracks down all of India’s greatest fish dishes. But it is much more than just a foodie memoir; it’s also an excursion into history, as he dives headfirst into the politics of overfishing in Goa, or the reason for the drop in the quality of hilsa. As he crisscrosses the states, inspecting the famous fish treatment for asthma in Andhra Pradesh, which involves the swallowing of a murrel fish, scouring Mumbai for Gomantak and Malvani cooking classics, Subramanian proves that he’s one of the best travel and food writers to come out of India in the last decade.
Songs of Blood and Sword, A Daughter’s Memoir, by Fatima Bhutto (Penguin Viking)
Fatima Bhutto’s chronicle of deaths foretold gains resonance from the turbulent circumstances of her life. Her father Murtaza and her aunt Benazir spent much of their political careers locked in a battle over the legacy of their father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Fatima believes that Benazir had “moral responsibility” for Murtaza’s death in a gun battle outside his home in 1996, and her autobiography is marked by the accounts of bloodshed, rivalry and bitter feuds. Bhutto is an often naïve but always intense narrator.
The Wish Maker, Ali Sethi (Penguin India)
This three-generation novel set in contemporary Pakistan is a TV soap opera masquerading as fiction — one reason for Sethi’s considerable popularity and high sales over the last year. The Wish Maker packs in the fever and fret of Partition, the Bangladesh War and weddings in contemporary Pakistan, all told with exuberance and gusto rather than craft and nuance. Despite its clichés, what makes Sethi’s book work for many is the ease of the writing and the familiarity of the stories he has to tell. Look for entertainment rather than insight.
Delhi Calm, Vishwajyoti Ghosh (HarperCollins)
The Emergency years have been captured by Indian writers from Rushdie to Rohinton Mistry before, but Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s attempt to set down those dark, turbulent times in graphic novel form is startlingly unusual. The graphic novel, with Ghosh’s stark, telling illustrations, is perfectly suited to examining the years when India gave up its freedoms. Delhi Calm suffers slightly from the lack of a great story — this is more a chronicle of the times than a true fictionalisation — but it works well for readers, especially those in the generation that grew up without painful, haunting memories of the years when the trains ran on time for all the wrong reasons.
The House on Mall Road, Mohyna Srinivasan (Penguin India)
Mohyna Srinivasan’s likeable debut novel follows the fortunes of an army brat, Parvati, as she attempts to unravel an old tragedy while discovering romance with a capital R. One of the charms of The House on Mall Road is its faithful excavation of army life, from the rituals of the Mess to the dangers and crippling inconveniences of life in the border areas of India, but this isn’t always enough. This is an uneven first novel — a pleasant and rewarding, but not extraordinary, read.
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