fiction

Blood on the Border

Arindam Mukherjee

A new crop of writers are adapting the the tried-and-tested spy thriller to an Indian context, for an Indian readership, with a familiar villain

The Binge Writer

Devika Bakshi

Madeline Miller can write for 14 hours a day and still maintains she does not deserve to be called a writer. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2012

Real life intrudes on fiction all the time. Kalpish Ratna indulge in some literary detection as they search for clues to the true character of Arthur Conan Doyle in Sherlock Holmes’ life and movements

Death of the Reader

Tabish Khair

Readers who ignore historical silences in fiction by authors like Zadie Smith and Khalid Hosseini are just buying into the feel-good myth of multiculturalism

‘Writing has a Religious Character’

Shaikh Ayaz

Aatish Taseer believes writing is an ‘intense form of concentration’, and when immersed in it, he often feels he can live without friends, family or lovers

As the Name Suggests

Akshay Sawai

Lost and Found by CP Surendran will lose the reader in its maze of characters and find him again.

The MBA Writer

Amish Tripathi

Rejection slip after rejection slip almost led The Immortals of Meluha to an ignominious death before it rose to become an instant chartbuster. Amish Tripathi on being the author of an unexpected bestseller.

How I wrote my 500 page novel set in ancient Greece without being there

Aniruddha Bahal

‘The Emissary’ takes you to Ancient Greece at the time of Alexander the Great through the tale of a young renegade who ends up with a role in shaping Greek destiny. How the idea took seed, though, is another story