What One Would Like To Read In 2006...

...is a book by an Indian author who's in love with the English language. Who doesn't use the form of the novel merely to narrate thinly-disguised autobiographical incidents in servicable prose, but who makes the language soar and sing, who defies conventional structure to come up with something unique (nice try Altaf, but no cigar). An Indian Nabokov, and Indian Joyce. An Indian Woolf. Best of all, an Indian author who defies comparison. Who bends, twists, shapes and moulds sentences till they shine. Who doesn't subscribe to the view that prose is a clear pane of glass through which to view the world, but who dares all in creating a stained-glass masterpiece. Going beyond realism, magic realism, exoticism, social commentary and textbook writing exercises. to create a work that gives you gooseflesh in the first few pages itself. An author who risks falling flat on his or her face from the tightrope of prose but who stays on nevertheless. Who cares little for academic concepts of Indian Writing in English or postcolonial literature or Empires Writing Back, but who expresses his or her material in such a way as to create something utterly distinct, utterly above question. Who doesn't mind being misunderstood. Whose voice heralds that something new is born and making itself heard around the world.

Il miglior fabbro: one awaits your arrival.