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Quotes From Here And There

Albert Einstein
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Dylan Thomas
I fell in love – that is the only expression I can think of – at once, and am still at the mercy of words, though sometimes now, knowing a little of their behavior very well, I think I can influence them slightly and have even learned to beat them now and then, which they appear to enjoy.
Eddie Cantor
It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.
Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
e e cummings
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Eyler Coates
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually produce a masterpiece. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Gustave Flaubert
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Going to the Opera is like making love; we get bored but we come back.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
John Steinbeck
Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.
Leonard Cohen
Ring the bells that still can ring;
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Paul Sweeney
You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.
Peter Altenberg
I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
Robert Frost
In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money.
Satchel Paige
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
Thomas Mann
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
V S Naipaul
The writer has only to listen very carefully and with a clear heart to what people say to him, and ask the next question, and the next.

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Showing posts with label Booker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Booker. Show all posts

Winner Of The First Australia-Asia Literary Award

Monday, November 24, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

"There's a huge change coming very fast and this prize is giving a glimpse of that future." Nury Vittachi, judge and founding board member of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership.

DAVID MALOUF has won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award for his short story collection The Complete Stories.

The AU$110,000 award, which was created by the former Labor government in Western Australia, is worth AU$10,000 more than the next richest, the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and is given for fiction by writers resident in, or outside Australia, writing primarily about Australia or Asia.

Malouf was "very pleased to be the first recipient". He welcomed the award, and praised it as unique among state literary prizes.

"There is certainly no other literary prize where Australia is the initiator which takes in Asia like this does, so it's a very good thing that we're looking outwards rather than inwards as we tend to do" he said.

The Complete Stories won from a very strong shortlist, including The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize), The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (longlisted for the Booker), Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey, and Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital.

The longlist, culled from 111 entries, also had plenty of dazzle, including the Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee (Diary Of A Bad Year), Haruki Murakami (After Dark), Rodney Hall (Love Without Hope) and Alex Miller (Landscape Of Farewell).

"It's a wonderful piece of writing, a combination of decades of work, and it captures the human condition in such a deep and intense way," said Nury Vittachi, a member of the judging panel, along with the Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, and the Australian critic Peter Craven. Vittachi is also a founding board member of the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership.

"His characters are very ordinary people and he captures the intense joys and sadness of ordinary life."

Vittachi agreed the decision to award the prize to a book of short stories was unusual.

"It might usually go to a novel. But there's an ancient story form called a bracelet, where you have a sequence of stand-alone stories which when read together have as much power as a single, united novel. We thought this book worked as just such a bracelet."

Vittachi sees the award as a means to divine the region's literary future.

"This award is special as it has a focus on a particular region, a region where there are 4 billion people," Vittachi said.

"The future of our cultural entertainment will be here. We're looking for a new Asia-Pacific flavour, as that is a good pointer to what the new literature will be. There's a huge change coming very fast and this prize is giving a glimpse of that future."

Malouf said he hoped "booksellers, publishers and the media get behind the prize in the way they do for the Miles Franklin Award".

Australia-Asia Literary Award Shortlist

  • Michelle DE KRETSER The Lost Dog Publisher: Allen & Unwin
  • Mohsin HAMID The Reluctant Fundamentalist Publisher: Penguin
  • David MALOUF The Complete Stories Publisher: Random House
  • Ceridwen DOVEY Blood Kin Publisher: Atlantic Books
  • Janette TURNER HOSPITAL Orpheus Lost Publisher: HarperCollins

Australia-Asia Literary Award Longlist

  • J.M. COETZEE Diary of a Bad Year Publisher: Random House Group Ltd
  • Matthew CONDON The Trout Opera Publisher: Random House (Vintage)
  • Michelle DE KRETSER The Lost Dog Publisher: Allen & Unwin
  • Ceridwen DOVEY Blood Kin Publisher: Atlantic Books
  • Rodney HALL Love without Hope Publisher: Pan Macmillan
  • Mohsin HAMID The Reluctant Fundamentalist Publisher: Penguin
  • Mireille JUCHAU Burning In Giramondo Publishing
  • David MALOUF The Complete Stories Publisher: Random House
  • Alex MILLER Landscape of Farewell Publisher: Allen & Unwin
  • Haruki MURAKAMI After Dark Translator: Jay Rubin Publisher: Random House Group
  • Indra SINHA Animal’s People Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
  • Janette TURNER HOSPITAL Orpheus Lost Publisher: HarperCollins
-from The Sydney Morning Herald, November 22, 2008.

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Nadine Gordimer's Coming To Bombay!!!

Thursday, November 6, 2008 by Abhinav Maurya

We've a chance to witness a book reading by Nadine Gordimer in Bombay. Nadine Gordimer has won the Nobel for literature, the Booker, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the best book from Africa. The details are reproduced below. Thanks to Peter Griffin of Caferati for the tip.

Ministry of External Affairs (Public Diplomacy Division),
Sahitya Akademi & The Asiatic Society of Mumbai

cordially invite you to a book reading
by
Dr. Nadine Gordimer distinguished South African writer and Nobel laureate
on
Sunday, 9 November 2008
At 10.30 a.m.

Venue: The Durbar Hall, The Asiatic Society of Mumbai Town Hall,
Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Fort, Mumbai - 400 023.

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The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Saturday, January 5, 2008 by Abhinav

Title:- The Satanic Verses
Genre:- Fiction
Subgenre:- Novel
Author:- Salman Rushdie
Publisher:- Viking Press
ISBN Number:- 0-312-27082-8
Price:- £5.99

The Blurb

No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a fatwa from Iran's Ayatollahs decreeing his death. Furore aside, it is a marvellously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta, who has been for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies, and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in fifteen years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. When the jumbo jet blows apart above the English Channel, Gibreel and Saladin are the two who survive and are washed to an English beach. However, it soon becomes clear that curious changes have come over them and that they have been chosen as protagonists in the eternal struggle between God and the Devil.

Rushdie's astonishing powers of invention are at their best in this Booker Prize shortlist and Whitbread Prize winner. Salman Rushdie is the author of Midnight's Children, winner of the 1981 Booker Prize, and Shame.

The Review

The Satanic Verses is a novel which falls in the genre of Magical Realism (a beautiful paradox of our modern times), of which we see much in Gabriel García Márquez's works.

It tells the story of the enchanting Gibreel Farishta who rises from being a pauper in Bombay to a popular filmstar playing Hindu deities in Bollywood mythologicals. The humor in the novel commences when Gibreel refuses to make love to his female admirers with the elephant snout on, which he has used as a prop for playing Lord Ganesha in a movie and which his fans have come to fancy. He complains that an acting career in Bombay is quite less of acting and much more of frantic travel between studios trying to keep schedules.

It also tells the story of the misplaced Saladin Chamcha, who develops an English accent so refined and immaculate that he lends his voice to British radio shows. He shuns his father who loathes books and had sent him away from Bombay to study in Britain. He returns after a long period of absence only to find that the city of his childhood has changed in a quintessential measure.

On his return trip to UK, Saladin Chamcha meets Gibreel Farishta who has absconded in order to meet his flame Annie Cone, the Mount Everest conquerer whom he courted in Bombay. The plane gets hijacked and all but the two protagonists of the novel - Chamcha and Farishta - are dead. The two are washed ashore on the waves of the English Channel, only to find that there has been a major change of roles. Gibreel thereafter suffers hallucinations of being an archangel, while Saladin is transformed into a chimera representing the devil.

Saladin miraculously recovers from the transmogrification and plots his revenge against Gibreel for refusing recognition and help when Saladin was led into custody by policemen. Like Iago, he plots the murder of Annie Cone at the hands of the suspicious and jealous Gibreel Farishta himself. In the climax, Gibreel shoots himself when he realizes what a mistake he has committed.

The novel also runs the course of three mini-plots: The first comprises the tale of Mahound's revelations from Archangel Gibreel, Hind - Mahound's fiercest opponent and Baal - the irreverent poet. The second speaks of the Imam and his gang of terrorists. And the third and most beautiful story is that of Ayesha, the girl who leads poor villagers on a Haj pilgrimage after convincing them that if God willed it, the waters of the Arabian Sea would part to make way for them.

The novel has ample instances of Rushdie-style humor and sarcasm. The narrative though broken into four parallel threads of narration is held together in a very cohesive manner. Rushdie's implicit commentary on the racism prevalent in UK is commendable and should have been the focus of attention, rather than the much publicized and denounced fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against him. However, the novel is not as erudite as it could have been. It is in no way grand or profound, and does not seek to reveal something that the reader is unaware of. Definitely not one of Rushdie's better novels.

The book was banned in many countries including Iran and India, for propagating the theory of The Satanic Verses - those verses of the Holy Quran which were revealed to the Prophet by the Satan and which he later retracted as being part of the Holy Book of the Moslems. It was fortunate that Salman Rushdie survived the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, since the Japanese translator Igarashi was murdered, and the Italian translator Capriolo suffered serious physical injuries due to being stabbed.

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A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Friday, January 4, 2008 by Abhinav

I'm almost through with Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance set in the Emergency (1975-1984). It is pure Bombayana. Written with a mix of caustic insight and deep compassion, Mistry's prose is the most natural ever. He writes like an insider - hell, even makes Rushdie's work feel like an outsider's voice. Rushdie writes in awe; his love for the city is almost filial. Mistry on the other hand knows Bombay for the bitch that she is; his depiction of the city is steeped in amorous love with the whiff of loss looming large over the milieu he creates. It is for this reason that Mistry can write with greater acceptance and credibility of the city's tragedies than Rushdie. I'm on a happy track with the last hundred pages or so of the tome to finish. The whiff of impending tragedy is looming large. Let's hope I get through.

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