Book Review The Big Book Shelf by Sunil Sethi

Book Review
The Big Book Shelf by Sunil Sethi
The author in conversation with 30 famous writers
The book was purchased from Calicut airport before boarding the flight to Muscat.
In the blurb the author says that ' writers are often reticent about how and why they write, how their ideas and themes develop or how their charcters and plots emerge. they can be equally reserved about their personal histories.
This book gives a peep into the lives of literary giants including Nobel laureates, Booker Prize winners, acclaimed historians, biographers, and philiosphers. The book is dedicted to all those who regard books as enduring companions in life. The introductions talks about the birth of the talk show on NDTV - Just Books. The show was neatly divided into the following sections
1) Book Pills - short take on the literary happenings of the week
2) My bedside book - well known people talking about their favourite books.
3) My Pick - A list of new titles in bookshops.
4) Interview with the author - ( The seed for this compilation)

This book is all about the passion of reading and the love for letters, sprinkled with quotes from great authors - Sample this from Nadibe Gordimer - Reading my dear is the only training for a writer from a younger age. You only become a writer by being a compulsive reader. Paul Theroux advices young writers like this - Go away. Yes. Leave home, leave your parents and leave all the comforting things that hold you back...because if you stay...people will always ask you what you are doing - what you are writing,what you are publishing. They ask you questions that you can't answer.

The book also gives us a glimpse into the working culture of the writers. Jeffrey Archer's regime goes like this - 'I write up to seventeen drafts. I get away for two months and I wake up at 5:30 in the morning. I write from six to eight and take a two-hour break, I again write from two until four, followed by another two-hour break, I again write from two until four, followed by another two-hour break, then I write from six until eight, light supper, go to bed at 9:30 or 10:00 and begin again at 5:30 the next day. Fifty days of that in a row. Khushwant Singh rises at 4 a.m everyday, hasn't missed a newspaper deadline in sixty years and is ruthless in dismissing visitors. 'People don't drop in. I don't see them without an appointment and when I invite them it's strictly between 7 p.m and 8 p.m. I can be very rude to anyone who stays even a minute after eight' Some authors who are younger, juggles two careers - for example - Upamanyu Chatterjee, who is also a civil servant sets himself a ceratin number of words a day or how to resolve an idea ora problem in the plot, as a daily target. He writes every morning before leaving for office.He takes about five years to complete a novel. The story of Nadeem Aslam is inspiring for all those who want to master the language - Aslam grew up in a small town in Pakistan, attending an Urdu-medium school till the age of fourteen, when his family was forced to migrate to Britain to escape poiltical persecution. " When I arrived in England my English was, "This is a cat."... My life was broken in half. Instead of going to college, for many years he eked out a meagre living, working on building sites and in bars so that he could read in libraries. He would retreat into a private world to be able to write.'There were times when I draped the windows with black cloth. There was no phone, no TV and no radio, no newspapers and I just filled up the freezer with food and didn't leave the house for two and a half months.

The book also examines the themes and motifs found in the work of these writers. Some of them like Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Kiran Desai left India and thier literary world view was changed. The same can be said of Salman Rushdie and others who belong to the Indian diaspora. There is also a group of foreign writers like Paul Theroux, Mark Tully and William Dalrymple who likes India and makes the land a part of their literary landscape.

Some of my favorite writers who are featured in this book are:
Kiran Desai
Umberto Eco
Gunter Grass
Orhan Pamuk
Salman Rushdie
Amartya Sen
Vikram Seth
Khushwant Singh