IN THE COUNTRY OF MEN

A review in The Statesman about Hisham Matar's 'In The Country of Men' had this to say: "Who would publish a book about the troubles of a Libyan child when, in the eyes of the western media, the whole country is reduced to the delusions of Gaddafi."

Obviously, Viking wasn't taking this too seriously because they did and the book has emerged as one of the hottest reads this year. In the book trade, it is being referred to as the 'Libyan Kite Runner.' The parallels between Khaled Hosseini's and Matar's accounts are hard to miss. Love, loss, longing, betrayal, politics and conflicts cross paths more than once.

Like 'The Kite Runner' this is a book that plays in your head, long after you have flipped the last page. But never before have tales of personal and collective betrayal been so finely narrated. The story is told by Suleiman, a 24-year-old Libyan in exile in Egypt.

Through his eyes you are drawn back to the troubled events that unfolded in Tripoli in the summer of 1979. It was a time of protests of all sorts - political, student with dissent spilling on the streets.

Suleiman shares his life with his unhappy mother while his father travels around the world to keep his business going. That is what he believes till he comes across his father at the city square. Then the secret police comes after them and the narrator later learns his father is part of a network of underground liberals.

On the one hand, he has deal with his mother's illness, something that revolves around drinking something she buys secretly from the baker. Though not once, does Suleiman's love for his mother falter and Matar pens it evocatively:

"Although her urgent stories tormented me, my vigil and what I then could only explain as her illness bound us into an intimacy that since occupied the innermost memory I have of love. If love starts somewhere, if it is a hidden force that is brought out by a person, like light off a mirror, for me that person was her. There was anger, there was pity, even the dark warm embrace of hate, but always love and always the joy that surrounds the beginning of love."

With prose like that, what's not to like about 'The Country of Men.'

There are times when fiction seems to mirror fact. Among other things there are brutal executions, killings, unanswered questions, disappearances and friendships lost.

The descriptions are chilling and while the author maintains that the main events are fictional, some of the gnawing details make it seem all too real. Fact is Matar's family was forced to flee Tripoli for Cairo in 1979 due to his diplomat father's politics. That's just one of the many reasons you would want to treasure this debut that took Matar five long years to finish.

BOOK INFO: 256 pages. July 2006. Publisher: Viking.

COMMONWEALTH WRITERS PRIZE

Sharon's done a comprehensive post on this. We've exchanged a couple of emails, she's kindly posted my comments on her blog.

You possibly know the categories and the short-list already. If not, its all here.

In terms of South Asian writing, I'm delighted to see Vikram Chandra and Yasmine Gooneratne in the shortlist but I am dismayed by the categorisation.

If Africa can be a category unto itself why not South Asia? Is our writing not competitive enough, not good enough or simply not enough?

What's even more confounding about the categorisation is the clubbing of South Asia with Europe. I could understand a South Asia/South-East Asia club, 'Europe and South Asia' beats me.

So while we get the token representation through Chandra and Gooneratne, if you were to look the 'Best First Book' shortlist, its entirely dominated by entries from Britain. Seriously?

The Saffron Kitchen, by Yasmin Crowther (UK) Abacus/Little Brown
The Mathematics of Love, by Emma Darwin (UK) Headline/Review
This Time of Dying, by Reina James (UK) Portobello
Giraffe, by J M Ledgard (UK), Jonathan Cape
Londonstani, by Gautam Malkani (UK), Fourth Estate
In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar (UK), Viking
The Amnesia Clinic, by James Scudamore (UK), Harvill Secker

Again delighted to see Hisham Matar, not sure of the rest.

Judging our writing this year are esteemed folks from this panel. They are literary forces to reckon with it, but was it really that difficult to get South Asian or South-East Asian representation on this panel?

At a time when you know who is dominating the lit lists, this prize for one calls for a serious re-look. Giving some thought to its categories could just be the start.

THE BOOKER SHORTLIST

It's out! Someone please pass me the Kleenex! Claire Messud and David Mitchell are not on it! Ok, so 'Black Swan Green' wasn't entirely 'Cloud Atlas' - it wasn't meant to be right. Please tell me didn't anyone find the narration stirring? What about Messud's 'The Emperor's Children'? Sure, the story was about its simplicity itself. Isn't that what got it into the longlist in the first place?

The only saving grace for me was seeing two familiar names i.e. books I've read or am in the process of reading. Hisham Matar's 'In the Country of Men' and Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss' have made the cut.

Whether or not they will remain the front runners is quite another story though.

As things stand now, Sarah Waters' 'The Night Watch' - a 1940s tale of heroism and love which narrowly missed out on this year's Orange prize - is tipped at 2-1. A close second is Edward St Aubyn with 'Mother's Milk' at 3-1. St Aubyn's novel is a sequel to his 1990s trilogy, 'Some Hope' that followed the fluctuating fortunes of the privileged, dysfunctional Melrose family.

While some critics and book sellers have dubbed it a "brave shortlist" with a focus on "talent for the future" I'd agree with the Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead who had called the longlist "respectable but not startling".

If you haven't seen it already, here's what you should be reading, if you into the whole awards determine my reading thing:
Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Kate Grenville - The Secret River (Canongate)
M J Hyland - Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Hisham Matar - In the Country of Men (Viking)
Edward St Aubyn - Mother's Milk (Picador)
Sarah Waters - The Night Watch (Virago)

You have till October 10th to read and figure out, who you think should walk away with the US $94,000 award to be announced at yet another glittering ceremony in London.

THE BOOKER LONGLIST

Time to catch up on your reading, dudes and dames....
the 2006 Man Booker Long list is out.

Some usual suspects - Nadine Gordimer, Kate Grenville and Howard Jacobson.

Some names that simply had to be there - Sarah Waters, Peter Carey and David Mitchell.

Some welcome surprises as well - Kiran Desai, Naeem Murr and Hisham Matar.

The full list of 19 titles unfolds like thus:
Peter Carey's 'Theft: A Love Story' (Faber)
Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss' (Hamish Hamilton)
Robert Edric's 'Gathering the Water' (Doubleday)
Nadine Gordimer's 'Get a Life' (Bloomsbury)
Kate Grenville's 'The Secret River' (Canongate)
M J Hyland's 'Carry Me Down' (Canongate)
Howard Jacobson's 'Kalooki Nights' (Jonathan Cape)
James Lasdun's 'Seven Lies' (Jonathan Cape)
Mary Lawson's 'The Other Side of the Bridge' (Chatto & Windus)
Jon McGregor's 'So Many Ways to Begin' (Bloomsbury)
Hisham Matar's 'In the Country of Men' (Viking)
Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children' (Picador)
David Mitchell's 'Black Swan Green' (Sceptre)
Naeem Murr's 'The Perfect Man' (William Heinemann)
Andrew O'Hagan's 'Be Near Me' (Faber)
James Robertson's 'The Testament of Gideon Mack' (Hamish Hamilton)
Edward St Aubyn's 'Mother's Milk' (Picador)
Barry Unsworth's 'The Ruby in her Navel' (Hamish Hamilton)
Sarah Waters' 'The Night Watch' (Virago)

The shortlist will be announced on 14th September and the winner on 10th October. Still plenty of time to book your bets - hopefully after having read the text.

Would be great to see which publisher got makes it to the finish this year round.

THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR

I'm usually suspect of lists, particularly those that attempt to set apart the best from the rest. But when such lists happen to be from The Economist, I do happen to sit up, read the fine print and take notice. Not that they always give me what I want.

Often a lot of South Asian writers are simply ignored. This year too, I was hoping to see Vikram Chandra's 'Sacred Games' somewhere on the list - it's not. Nor is Kiran Desai's Booker prize winning 'The Inheritance of Loss'. While one of my favourite reads of the year, Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children' makes the cut, Hisham Matar's stunning debut 'In The Country of Men' doesn't.

Apart from these literary heart-breaks it is encouraging to see James Kynge's 'China Shakes the World' and Edward Luce's 'In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India' get the mention they deserve in the 'Politics and Current Affairs' section.

The book that's caught my eye this time round is:
"Journey Through Great Britain
By Iqbal Ahmed. Coldstream; 190 pages; £9.95
A deceptively simple account of travels in Britain by a Kashmiri immigrant. It shows the British as others see them -not as they think they are."

Though several searches show the correct title of the book is 'Empire of the Mind: A Journey Through Great Britain'. A sequel to his first book 'Sorrows of the Moon', a moving investigation of the immigrant experience in London, Iqbal Ahmed moves beyond the capital to make a journey through the remnants of Britain’s imperial past in 'Empire of the Mind'. Ahmed who was born in Kashmir in 1968, has lived in London since 1994. His first book was chosen as a Book of the Year in The Guardian and The Independent on Sunday. He is currently working on a novel.

Read more about how a hotel doorman by night, turns into a writer of note by day here: http://www.thecnj.com/review/033006/books033006_01.html

So if lists determine your reading, you'd do well to head here before setting out for the nearest bookstore...
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8380365&fsrc=nwlgafree

MY BOOK OF THE YEAR

By now you have done your reading, read the lists, made your choices. Not that you need the critics for that. Reading is after all a personal pursuit. You might like crime fiction, I might detest it. You might like fantasy, I might like the real world. You might like chick lit, I might read only literary fiction. There you are, in the long drawn cycle of critics telling you what to read. More often that, the critic hasn't even read the book in any case. Or even if they have they haven't engaged with the book. Which is why, I try to tell everyone I meet, there's tons of good stuff out there, make your choices. It isn't that difficult to get yourself to a book store or even a library to decide and pick what you really want to read, not what others say you should be reading.

It's an entire universe out there. You can get lost in it, depending on which genre you choose. Most books are defined ever so often by genre, though once in a way you come across a book that defies definition, that merges styles, themes, takes you into a parallel universe with its evocative characters. This year, after tons of brilliant reads notably Hisham Matar's 'In The Country of Men', Peter Carey's 'Theft', Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children', Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss' - towards the end of the year, the seven year wait for Vikram Chandra's 'Sacred Games' did it for me.

A short review on the relative merits of the book is here:
Http://www.todayonline.com/pda/162233ag.htm

Beyond what is mentioned here, it is passages like these, that have propelled it to my book of the year:

"War comes upon us. We are led in leaning curves towards the battlefield. You may try to avoid it, but find that last flower-lined turn you chose was really an entrance into a blood-soaked arena. So we were here. 'Good,' I said. 'Let's start.'

"And one of these sisters was Navneet, beloved and best of all, now lost for ever..... It was useless to remember. The histories had already been written, and what had happened, had happened.....There was no running away from life, and trying to wish away suffering only made it more present. She took a deep breath: bear it."

"There was a sloping river in the sky, a sinuous curve of light. There was the sky above, and us underneath..... Everything sits in pairs, in opposites, so brutal and so lovely."

And there's that bit on writers, that isn't going to win Chandra too many fawning fans. I'm not about to reveal that here, save the best for the read and take your time to fill in the dots for the text above.

Here's to another year of great reads.

KIRAN DESAI'S INHERITANCE

I haven't met Kiran, but having spent some memorable and precious moments that will last a lifetime with her mother, I can say if there is one thing that both of them share it has to be modesty. Apart from their fine writing abilities, of course.

Accepting the Man Booker Prize, Kiran spoke about her mother, to whom she said she owes "a debt so profound and so great that this book feels as much hers as it does mine....It was written in her company and in her witness and in her kindness. I really owe her this book so enormously, there isn't enough to convey it."

Interestingly, mother and daughter share the same house. Kiran works upstairs, Anita downstairs. Its something we talked about in our panel discussion in Ubud. The grand dame of literature told us how they both cross paths but never step into each others writing domains. As Anita pointed out "it's a very good arrangement."

And one that is definitely bearing fruits. Kiran's first novel, 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard', won a Betty Trask award in 1999. Now, she will be toast of the literary bunch. After all she has beaten five other authors including favourite Sarah Waters and her book 'The Night Watch', for the 50,000-pound award. In doing so, she has become the youngest ever female winner of the award and has bettered the record of her mother, who was nominated thrice for the award, most recently in 1999, but failed to win.

'The Inheritance of Loss' tells parallel stories based in post-colonial India and the United States. A Cambridge-educated Indian judge is living out a reclusive retirement in the foothills of the Himalayas, until his orphaned teenage grand-daughter comes to stay with him. His existence eventually comes under threat from Nepalese insurgents. At the same time, his cook's son, who has moved to the US to seek his fortune and ends up an illegal immigrant in the restaurant kitchens of New York.

Kiran herself has lived through several experiences. She grew up in India and moved to Britain when she was 15. Her prize-winning book took almost eight years to complete. She wrote "half stories, quarter stories" and picked the novel out of it.

Of the whole process of writing the book, Kiran says "it was quite a difficult, emotional experience for me." Though it these emotions that did it for the Booker judges who hailed it as "a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness". As the chair of the panel of judges, Hermoine Lee put it more simply "the book is movingly strong in its humanity and I think that in the end is why it won."

OTHER BOOKER CONTENDERS WERE:
Sarah Waters - 'The Night Watch'
Edward St Aubyn's - 'Mother's Milk'
MJ Hyland's - 'Carry Me Down'
Kate Grenville's - 'The Secret River'
Hisham Matar's - 'In The Country of Men'

AND THE BOOKER GOES TO.....

It's the moment we've all been waiting for. After the initial disappointment of seeing Claire Messud and David Mitchell being dumped, I was busy rooting for Hisham Matar and Kiran Desai.

It had to be down to the wire, both awesome books in their own right, tugging at your heartstrings with the multitude of issues they address.

I met Kiran's mother, the celebrated novelist Anita Desai and was fortunate to moderate a panel on 'Writing Across Time, Place and Identity' that featured her together with Meira Chand and Shalini Akhil at the Ubud Readers' and Writers' Festival. In fact, before the discussion, we talked about Kiran and how Anita has inspired a whole generation of writers and the fact that the teaching started right at home. Anita gave her usual kind smile and told me in her gentle whisper "I can't take credit for that." We talked about novel making and what a moment it would be if Kiran won the prestigious Booker.

The moment is here and even as I write this I can visualise Anita Desai's warm smile lighting up my space. It keeps Indian writing firmly in the spotlight and calls for more than just another celebration.

So if you haven't already read the book, there will never be a better moment to find out all about 'The Inheritance of Loss'.

If you are still thinking about it, read Sharon's brilliant prose on the book here:
http://thebookaholic.blogspot.com/2006/10/inheriting-loss.html

DID THEY WRITE THAT?

It's often been alleged that critics don't read enough. Or that they mis-read almost everything about the book, including its title.

Hisham Matar's 'In The Country of Men' has emerged as one of the hottest books of the year.

Though a review in The Statesman had this to say:
"Who would publish a book about the troubles of a Libyan child when, in the eyes of the western media, the whole country is reduced to the delusions of Gaddafi."

Nothing beats this one from Times Online though, which of all things got the title wrong:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,23109-2268797,00.html
A child's-eye view of terror
Review by Celia Brayfield
"It is no surprise to learn that before its publication, 'In The Company of Men' has been hailed internationally as one of the most brilliant literary debuts of recent years."

PS: I'm half way through the book, watch this space for the full review.

CALAMITY BOOKINGS

The race for the Booker is on....
So far, Sarah Waters, Peter Carey and David Mitchell are the bookmakers hottest picks.

With the short list due out on 14th September, the fun has only just begun. I'm rooting for Mitchell's 'Black Swan Green' over Carey's 'Theft: A Love Story'. Look out for my samurai suit, if Mitchell is not on the shortlist at least.

Though there is also Claire Messud's 'The Emperor's Children'. The story revolves around three friends who meet at University with starry eyed visions of changing the world. Aged 30, they find themselves struggling in their writing and journalism careers. The year is 2001 and by the time September comes around, they find themselves in situations they could never have predicted.

It's just the kind of book, you wish would never leave your shelf. It's not going to live mine for sometime at least.

Vying for attention next, is the enormously tempting 'In The Country of Men' by Hisham Matar. Have also got a copy of Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss'. Somewhere in between I just have to fit in Marisha Pessl's 'Special Topics in Calamity Physics' which has been flying off the shelf with just the traditional word of mouth.

The weekend's finally here and as you can see I'm fully 'Booked'.

ON THE SHELF

The kids are back at school - finally. That means two-three hours of reading time on good days. Needless to say, the bad ones invariably outweigh the good ones.

Adding to that big grin on my face are some fabulous books for review. After months of waiting, I finally get a sneak peek of Vikram Chandra's eagerly awaited (at least for me) 'Sacred Games', together with Hisham Matar's 'In The Country of Men'. As they say nothing like a cracking good read.

Before I get to that - the Byron Bay Writers Festival looms. The tickets and the leave are sorted out, now for the visas. Time to get cracking. If you haven't already read about it, the Festival is into its tenth year. My pal Janet de Neefe tells me I'll be truly shocked by the size of the receptive audience. Can't wait for some rocking good times in the month ahead.