Dina Zaman: best selling author

We got the first shipment of Dina Zaman's book I Am Muslim on the 3rd of March. The major bookshops started getting their hands on the book on Monday the 5th of March. The first print run of 3000 books was sold out within a month, with the bookshops clamouring for more. We are just into the second week of the third month and we are out of the second print run of another 3000. We have currently ordered another 3000 copies from the printers.

With 6000 sold in the first two months, this must be the fastest selling Malaysian book in English ever. Rehman Rashid and Karim Raslan have probably sold more in total. But the Dina Zaman juggernaut has just only started. The Malay version will be out soon.

The vast majority of the feedback received so far has been positive. "Thank you for writing the book Dina. Thank you for airing these issues. You have done us all a big favour." But not everyone, it appears, is happy. Dina has received threatening phone calls, rude emails, has been called names, branded an apostate and received "How dare you" hate mail - exactly the type of close-mindedness she rallies against.

Dina needs our support. Support her, post her a note.

An interview with Will Self

From Guardian Unlimited. Here are some interesting quotes.

I didn't have a favourite book as a child - I never have. I think there's something rather weird about people that do ...

There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy than connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.

(I write) First drafts as early in the morning as possible, then second, then third (retyping, I work on a manual). Once the first draft is 80% completed I start on the second, so that there's a conveyor belt of drafts in progress: this helps me to grasp the totality of the book.

Overall, though, I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.

Never worry about people stealing your ideas. If you're any good you'll have plenty more - whereas if they have to nick yours they'll never have any of their own, so pity them.

Advice to new writers: Think long and hard about whether this is what you really want to do. A book is published every 40 seconds in the world.

Secret to writing: I think it's like a lot of the creative talents; the talent does have to be there, but it also needs to be cultivated in the right way.

Full story: http://books.guardian.co.uk/whyiwrite/story/0,,2075745,00.html

On literary prizes

From The Guardian

Everyone likes to knock the 'Awards' ceremony, and deservedly too very often. The Oscars and Grammy Awards ahave become circuses which are nothing more than another show, not much better (or worse) than any of the others. Ditto Bollywood Awards and everything else. But I also remember what Huzir Suleiman once said: Everyone likes to knock the (Cameronian) awards until they win one themselves. I'm not sure if that makes it less of a circus.

Literary awards have managed to, somehow, remain above. Yes, we complain about this winner or that winner, etc, etc. But generally we accept that the books in the shortlist at least are worth checking out, particularly if they do throw up some new names, though not all the prizes are created equal in the eyes of the reader. A Man-Booker winner is someone special for some reason, a writer to be taken seriously. A Nobel Prize laureate is almost always a must read (unless the writer has an unpronounceable east European sounding name.) Then there is the Dublin Impac, the Costa (formerly known as the Whitbread), the Commonwealth (regional and overall) prizes and the (women's only) Orange prize, which are the better known. (The Americans have the Pulitzer, of course).

I personally cannot agree more with Maya Jaggi that, "What gets read should not be determined solely by the size of publishers' promotion budgets or the muscle of bookshop chains." Literary awards play a vital, even equalising, role. They alert readers to certain deserving books, which would otherwise be stillborn or buried alive by John Grisham/Dan Brown/JK Rowling type avalanches.

Literary prize winners are useful starting points on the reading journey. One does not have to like every prizewinner, or even any of them, and there are excellent books that have never won prizes. (I know some people who will read only award-winning novels, or make it a point to read every award winning book there is, and even feel obliged to like them even when they don't. That's a little sad.) But who nominates the books for consideration for the prizes. The publishers, of course. Is that a weakness in the system? Why would a publisher want to publish a book and not nominate it if he thinks it is good? Or, publish it if he thinks it is not good?

Whatever their faults, literary prizes do level the playing field somewhat, giving the 'unknown' author and small publisher a fighting chance in a world dominated by conglomerates.

Full story: http://books.guardian.co.uk/orange2007/story/0,,2059652,00.html

Sexist Literary Prize shortlist

Sexist Literary Prize shortlist

From The Independent

Are there literary prizes for men only? So why, in this day and age, this discrimination? Can we also have prizes for hairy men with beards, then? Or humans under five-six, barring tall people like Margaret Atwood. (They are too good anyway.) Or ... never mind.

Anyway Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss is in the list. (Boy does she need a leg up; afterall she has only won the - totally sexist - 'Man' Booker so far.

Then there is a book on the shortlist supposedly written in 'bad' English by a Chinese author, Xiaolu Guo, 33, titled A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, described as a romantic comedy. I have not having read the book yet, but I live in dread if seeing a flood of half baked manuscripts written in bad Manglish, Singlish and Honglish.

This year's list features writers from India, Britain, Nigeria, China and the United States.

The winner will be announced on 6 June 2007.

THE SHORTLIST

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun

Rachel Cusk - Arlington Park

Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

Xiaolu Guo - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

Jane Harris - The Observations

Anne Tyler - Diggings to America

Full story: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/news/article2458816.ece#2007-04-18T00:00:00-00:00

Best children's book

From The Guardian

Neither Richard Adams's Watership Down, nor any of the books C S Lewis's Narnia series are amongst the ten top books that have won the Carnegie gold medal for children's writing in an online vote to select the Carnegie of Carnegies to celebrate the 70th anniversary

If you are looking for good children's books and don't know where to start, here is the top 10 list of past winners of the Carnegie medal:

Skellig David Almond (1998)

Junk Melvin Burgess (1996)

Storm Kevin Crossley-Holland (1985)

A Gathering Light Jennifer Donnelly (2003)

The Owl Service Alan Garner (1967)

The Family From One End Street Eve Garnett (1937)

The Borrowers Mary Norton (1952)

Tom's Midnight Garden Philippa Pearce (1958)

Northern Lights Philip Pullman (1995)

The Machine-Gunners Robert Westall (1981)

Full story: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2061738,00.html