A short version of War and Peace

From The Independent Online:

It was 1,500 pages long, and by the time I reached the end I had forgotten what it was all about. I asked for it. I was about fourteen or fifteen and had just seen the movie - it was with Audrey Hepburn and Natasha is the only name I still remember. The movie was long enough. But I was a glutton for punishment. I also had to read Boris Pasternak and Dostoevsky. Now apparently they have discovered a shorter version with a difference - only 900 pages.

But the report says not everyone is pleased ... 'Academics fear many will be tempted to settle for what they regard as an unfinished version.'

This new book is, apparently, the life's work of a Russian scholar, Evelina Zaidenshnur, 'who for 50 years pored over thousands of pages to assemble Tolstoy's first draft, matching different inks, changes in handwriting and types of paper to piece together the author's earliest version.' Talk about no life!

An English translation of the work by Andrew Bromfield will be published by Fourth Estate in April. And the title? War and Peace: The Original Version. Expect to risk wrist injury.

Full Report: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/news/article2303037.ece

Free Banned Book

An Independent report said that it would give away an exclusive hardback edition of A Clockwork Orange free with every copy of The Independent print edition on Saturday 24th February. And then every week, starting from Saturday, 3 March, print edition readers will be able to buy a new hardback copy of the featured title for the week at a special discounted price of only £3.49 (RM 24.50) with the newspaper in the UK.

The report says: 'Banned Books is an exclusive collection of 25 cutting-edge titles, censored classics and literary landmarks by authors including Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, Andre Gide, Maya Angelou, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller and Ray Bradbury…'

And further adds: 'Their survival is a triumph of independent thought over the forces of repression, and a reminder of how exhilarating fiction at the cutting edge of the imagination can be.'

Anyone with friends in the UK?

Full report: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/article2287632.ece#2007-02-19T10:39:56-00:00

Cab drivers recite poetry

A Guardian Unlimited report by Michelle Pauli. Unsuspecting passengers visiting York this year can expect their cab drivers to recite WH Auden's poems. In a bid to promote his city of birth and to celebrate the centenary of Auden's birth, York tourism Partnership has come up with this great idea to train local cab drivers to recite his poems to their passengers.

Cabbie Dionysis Bekatorus who has special lessons says: "I'm really excited to be part of this project … As taxi drivers, we are often the first port of call for visitors to York so it's good that we can give them a taste of what cultural York can offer - and I'm looking forward to putting my new performance skills into practice."

Malaysian taxi drivers reciting Usman Awang? Nahhh ...

Full story: http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2017896,00.html

Arundhati Roy's new novel

Arundhati Roy's last (novel to date) was published 10 years ago. Few books have been loved or hated (or, more accurately, rubbished) as much as The God of Small Things. As a publisher I hear this often: I want to be write like Arundhati Roy - meaning I want to make a lot of money like she has. As a reader and bookseller I am often cornered; it has been either gush or rubbish. I won't talk about the former; it is not pretty dealing with a grown person gushing about anything. About rubbishing: did you actually enjoy that book, it was awful, how could you have enjoyed that book, she most definitely didn't deserve the Booker, do you think she deserved a Booker?

There are no halfway meeting points when it comes to Roy. Declare your views: do you love her or hate her?

Time to be honest here: Did I like the The God of Small Things? Yes. But I have to admit, I was uncomfortable with several parts (as was my friend J) about the way it overly pandered to the western reader with the 'Indian stereotype'. Several sections appeared to have been included at a later stage under someone else's 'advice' - to make it more 'exotic' perhaps? Is that why she said at that time that she was not going to write any more fiction?

Anyway in an interview with Reuters, she says that she is now working on a new novel after spending 10 years 'championing grassroots activism as a social and environmental activist' and penning four works of non-fiction including The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Power Politics, War Talk and An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire.

She is quoted: "The argument has been made, the battle remains to be fought - and that requires a different set of skills."

I am not holding my breath, but I am curious.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2012148,00.html

Surprise! Indian writers live in India

'For many years India's literary culture has been focused on London and New York. But things may be changing', reports Kathleen McCaul, writing for Guardian Unlimited. Absolutely, because that is where the market and money is. This is not dissimilar to the brain drain of scientists and professions to America, except they would be involved in more mundane chore.

The most famous of these NRIs is Salman Rushdie who rubbished all Indians who didn't write in English in his Introduction to the Vintage Book of Indian Writing, and whose essay in the TIME Magazine for India's 50th year of Independence conveniently forgot that India is closer to 5000 years old than 50. Excuse me, sir, Mr Rushdie, you may not have noticed that Valmiki, Vyasa, Kalidasa, Kabir and Tulsi Das - to name very very few - didn't write in English. And if you want more modern names in Indian vernacular writing how about Siva Sankaran Pillai, Vasudevan Nair, Anantha
Moorthy, Asokamitran … gosh I haven't even moved beyond south of India yet.

Anyway, I digress.

The report says that many NRIs are moving back to India to write. Altaf Tyrewalla spent years in America as a journalist and poet but returned home to work on his first novel. "I wouldn't have been able to work full time on a book in America because there's no question of living there without a job," he explains. "You need the health insurance."

"I don't know how, for instance, I could write from the perspective of an imaginary butcher in a chicken shop if I wasn't also suffering the humidity like him, suffering the noise of a ghetto like him, and yet trying, like him, to think amidst this discomfort, this cacophony ..." Talk about suffering for his art ...

More important is what are Indian (or any other non-European) writers allowed to write about. Pankaj Mishra's new book is about China and Rana Dasgupta's second novel is set in Bulgaria.

One writer says: "I have a lot of pressure from my publishers to write about India … it is a colonial hangover in publishing to think that writers in India, Africa and the Caribbean must write about their home cultures while writers from the West could write about anywhere. Mature literary cultures should feel like they can write about the world."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,2012008,00.html