PARIS: Deep in the vast La Sante prison in Paris, law student Morgane is discussing the classic novel The Outsider by Albert Camus with one of the prisoners.

Adama finds some of the language tricky, but said reading is a "lifeboat".

"It allows me to escape, to think of something else. I imagine the scenes in my head. It's as if I was directing a TV show," he told AFP.

Morgane is a volunteer with the charity Lire Pour Sortir (roughly: "Read to Get Out"), which sees reading as more than a metaphorical form of escape.

It is championing reading as a way to tackle France's overflowing prisons, currently 20 percent over capacity.

Lack of vocabulary is "the number one determining factor in social inequality," said lawyer Alexandre Duval-Stalla, who set up the charity in 2015.

"The more words you have, the better chance of a job, of inserting yourself into life," he told AFP.

A good vocabulary not only helps when speaking to judges, but can also prevent crimes in the first place, he said.

"All this aggression and impulsiveness we find with criminals comes from being unable to express themselves."

Illiteracy

Adama's choice of Camus is apt. The Franco-Algerian writer's own mother was illiterate, with a vocabulary of only around 400 words. It was a barrier between them, despite his lifelong devotion.

The Outsider also tells the story of a young man who ends up in prison facing the death sentence.

Almost a quarter of France's 72,173 prisoners are illiterate, according to government figures.

French prisons are required to have libraries, but not librarians -- who encourage reading, help detainees and organise cultural programmes.

Pressure is mounting. A new law, in force since January, scrapped automatic sentence reductions for good behaviour -- detainees must now show they have engaged with a cultural or work programme.

But lack of resources means many are unable to access the necessary programmes.

Lire Pour Sortir wants to help fill the gap and will double its volunteer network to 500 by 2024. But even then, it will still be in only 50 of France's 187 prisons.

Perspective

Books help perform the work that would ideally be done by psychologists if the resources existed, said Duval-Stalla.

"Criminals rarely put themselves in another person's shoes. Books allow them to live the stories of other people, and that's very important. Words give you perspective and the tools for reflection," he said.

La Sante, which was recently renovated, could provide an example.

Lire Pour Sortir runs its library and hired a professional librarian. Neat and tidy, with posters on the wall and an atmosphere of calm -- it could be the library of a small village, if not for the bars on the windows and guards at the door.

But with only 20 inmates permitted at a time, the waiting list is long. "We are victims of our own success," said its librarian Jean-Baptiste Devouassoux.

"We know what keeps people out of prison -- a job, housing, a family," said Duval-Stalla. "But also the capacity to express and understand yourself -- and that requires words."

BENGALURU: We live in a city that calls itself the knowledge capital of India, and yet it doesn’t have a single good library. As a historian, to access the works that I most depend on, books, pamphlets, collected works of Gandhi, Nehru and more, I would have had to make innumerable trips to libraries and archives, if not for the bookstores that I frequented,” said historian Ramchandra Guha, speaking at the 2023 edition of the ‘Ravi Sondhi Spirit of Bangalore’ lecture series, organised on Saturday at the Lady Jehangir Kothari Memorial Hall. 

According to Guha, the city’s innumerable bookstores, both the past and the present are the reason why the city has one of the largest English language book-buying populations in the country. Having been a frequent patron of Select and Premier bookstores between the early ’80s until their eventual decline, Guha said he has, over the years, found works that are a collector's dream in second-hand bookstores across the country. He recalls finding the first edition of Joseph Doke’s biography of MK Gandhi, signed by the latter’s grandson Gopal Krishna Gandhi. He also discovered his grandmother’s lost horoscope drafted on her birthday in 1910, enclosed in a random book. 

“The first book that I bought from Premier bookstore was a biography of Karl Marx by Isaiah Berlin in January 1980. Now, I don’t know what the statute of limitations is according to the recent judgement by the Supreme Court which came in the past few days. But if I’m liable for arrest for buying a copy of Karl Marx’s biography in the ’80s under the UAPA, I hope the many advocates in this room will come to my defence” he joked, adding, “My life has been divided by libraries, archives and books. My dreams growing up were about cricket or books and sometimes cricket and books.” 

One such dream was especially influential in Guha’s developing relationships with bookstores. “One of the dreams that I had over and over again was to do with Neville Cardus’ autobiography. Cardus was the greatest cricket writer of his time, and I had read several of his books, but not his autobiography. One of my distant cousins in Delhi had a copy of that book,” he shared.

“He was much older than me and had been to Oxford. So I wasn’t allowed to go into his room. I saw the book, but I couldn’t read it, so it became a forbidden fruit in my life. I would have these dreams every often where I would get off a train onto a train station. Go to an old second-hand bookstore. While browsing, I would find Cardus’ autobiography on the top shelf in a corner. I would happily go to the store clerk, who would tell me that the price was just `10. And then I would wake up!” 

As the bookstores of the past faded away into the annals of history, many more have cropped up to take their place. Two such stores are Blossoms and Bookworm. A patron of both, Guha remembers being invited for the launch of GR Viswanath’s biography by the owner of the latter. But when it was time to reach the venue, he was unable to find the store, due to his failing eyesight, only to be helped and led to the venue by the owner of Blossoms. “And that’s the spirit of Banglore!” exclaimed Guha.

Our multi-layered ancient culture is a repository of knowledge, whether via philosophy or astronomy, medicine or myths. In an epoch of AI dominating the public consciousness, it is more than ever crucial to safeguard and preserve ancient thought systems in forms that sustain them. While translations perform this duty with great aplomb, Indian writing in English has adopted the mode of transcreation: rewriting mythology as current, readable narratives, widely read and promising to endure.

In the talented pool of young writers who devote their time and energies to retelling Indian mythology via varied media, Anuja Chandramouli holds a special spot, much like Abhimanyu in the Mahabharata––who her latest book is titled after. Not enough may be written about him as an archetype.

Yes, he is Arjuna’s son, destined to stand tall as a warrior and the one chosen to further their Kuru lineage. While he isn’t one of the central protagonists in the epic, his character and prowess as a warrior make him stand out. Much loved, his death comes as a final pall of grief in the great war at Kurukshetra.

The author brings her imagination and prolific talent to resurrect him and situate him in a true-to-life fictional biography. The writing is powerful, thoroughly researched and instantly connects with the reader. The retelling begins with scenes of horrendous carnage at the end of the great war.

Victorious Arjuna races back to the Pandava camp, unable to interpret his sense of doom. In flashback mode, the reader meets Abhimanyu’s parents when Subhadra is still expecting him. His birth is a blessed occasion, surrounded by loving relatives who have already proclaimed him the leader of the next generation of combatants. 

His childhood is mapped out with family conclaves with the heroes of the age and his maternal uncles, Balarama and Lord Krishna. The prince’s association with his charioteer, Sumitra, occurs in infancy and the bonds they form remain indelible. Against the backdrop of precocious talent and the happiest extended-family dynamics, there are rumblings of darker things to come.

Soon enough the Pandavas returned from exile and the Kauravas refused to return to their kingdom. War among two branches of a mighty family is inevitable. Abhimanyu is allowed only a quick wedding with Uttara before they must all turn to battle. This is the bloodiest carnage ever in India: raging over, and unrelenting. It has tragic consequences. That Karna could employ dishonourable means to defeat him, stuns Abhimanyu. And at 16, he is martyred to the just cause.

Having drawn us into Abhimanyu’s life by transforming him into a living, breathing being, the author creates an engrossing and detailed portrayal of this strand of the epic. The book is rich in observations, expertly drawn interpersonal spaces and a sheer joy to read. Mostly it succeeds in bringing a fabled hero to the forefront of our consciousness.

Alternating between Lata Mangeshkar’s memories and the author’s narration, the biography starts with 
the singer’s early life. It’s a vivid picture that emerges of a young girl, whose adoration of her father’s immense talent, lays the seeds of her own journey as a dedicated artiste who will, in time, surpass him 
in fame and success.

Readers, who know that the book is the result of many sittings and phone calls between the author and the legendary singer, will look for Mangeshkar’s voice, but hear her only in snatches, a quote here and a sentence there in the first half of the book, which is more analytical.

The author goes through her journey as a singer, and talks about the influences she imbibed to create her own style, the quality and range of her voice that made it unique and inimitable, and her work with other singers. Shamshad Begum and Suraiya find mentioned here, with a list of duets Mangeshkar sang with them. Others, including male singers, follow later.

Music directors are also listed––Anil Biswas, C Ramchandra, Husnlal Bhagatram, Jamal Sen, Shankar-Jaikishan and more. This is where one can delight in rediscovering the many forgotten numbers that were sung so effortlessly by a rising star. One can expect to gain much more joy from the book if the reading is accompanied by frequent forays into the YouTube archives to listen to these old gems.

The work is essentially a chronicle of Mangeshkar’s journey through her songs. Mishra brings to the fore her contribution to popularising classical music, her easy navigation of ragas, prompting directors such as Anil Biswas, Naushad, SD Burman, Sajjad Hussain, Roshan and even ghazal king Madan Mohan, to create three-minute classical melodies that would resound in the listeners’ mind and evoke appreciation, even in those unaware of the technicalities of a raga.

The author’s repeated praise of the singer’s ability to ‘glide through a song’, ‘voice putting a rainbow to shame’ etc., however, could have been avoided. The qualities that Mangeshkar’s voice and singing contained have been known to listeners across generations. Also, disappointing is the fact that sometimes a story is hinted at, but not told.

It’s in the second half that the book comes into its own, mostly because it takes a Q&A format, recording Mangeshkar’s words with honesty. Its initial dry tone can perhaps be the translator’s way of abbreviating 
the more ornate flow of the Hindi original. 

Mishra is a deft interviewer. His knowledge of music and Hindi film-music history helps bring out details hitherto not known to many. What shines through is the simplicity of the singer’s love of her art, the offering of it as a spiritual practice, and her belief that, with a longer apprenticeship, she could have been a classical singer. This, coming from someone who has sung with no less a stalwart than Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, speaks of a humility that is rare in today’s time of instant fame.

This is also, perhaps, the first time several rumours about Mangeshkar’s life have been addressed––her fallout with SD Burman, and why she temporarily stopped singing duets with Rafi, among others. We also learn of the lesser-known incidents like the attempt to poison her, or the fact that she often remonstrated with musicians who made her sing in very high notes, because despite her ability to scale operatic notes, it was a strain on her voice.

Equally interesting is the fact that in spite of her standing and experience, she never ‘directed’ a composer to change a note or imposed her opinion in any way; only internalised the song and invested it with the emotion required by the actress and situation on screen.

It’s not easy to write a book on Lata Mangeshkar. Mishra has ventured bravely into space, giving us a chronicle of her songs over six decades. It’s a book any fan of the singer would treasure.

Peter Frankopan is a British historian and a bestselling author of books on the silk roads and the crusades.  This latest one is formidable in length (24 chapters) and spans (dawn of time to today), and teases out the interplay between environmental changes (natural or manmade) and human development and behaviour.  

This is a remarkable piece of work, written engagingly, in a style familiar to his earlier books. Although environmental changes figure in passing in historical accounts, this is probably the first attempt to cull an entire book out of it, connecting the dots and digging up unknown facts and facets.

(There was, of course, the earlier work of Fernand Braudel.)  In the author’s words, “This book has three goals. The first is to reinsert climate back into the story of the past as an underlying, crucial and much-overlooked theme in global history and to show where, when and how weather, long-run climate patterns and change in climate––anthropogenic and otherwise––have had an impact on the world.  The second is to set out the story of human interaction in the natural world over millennia and to look at how our species exploited, moulded and bent the environment to its will, both for good and for ill.  And the third is to expand the horizons of how we look at history.”

These are laudable objectives, and they are achieved. There are events the author has unearthed that even professional historians may be unaware of. The rise and decline of civilisations are typically depicted in economic, social and political terms. Rarely has climate featured. One reason why history can use this new lens is because of new technology, modelling and data analytics. The odd paper has been written, establishing, in a probabilistic rather than deterministic sense, how climate change is featured.

As an advocate of these new tools, Frankopan marshals together these findings (and the references are extremely recent) to build the case. Therefore, as you read through the book, the typical reaction will be, ‘Is that true? I didn’t know that.’ This is true not only of events one is unfamiliar with but also ones reasonably familiar with. 

I suspect this will also be true of the author. In its vast sweep of time and space, the book is almost like a unified field theory of climate change and human behaviour, with the causal link extending both ways. 
To quote again, “Writing this book has taught me a great many lessons about how we conceptualise the world around us. But it has also made me realise that the reason we are at such a dangerous intersection is the result of trends that have deep roots in the past."

"As far back as written records go, people worried about human interaction with nature and warned of the dangers of over-exploitation of resources and of long-term damage to the environment. It may well be that we are now on the verge of finally becoming victims of our own success as a species and that the success and strains our behaviour has put on ecosystems have pushed us close to or even beyond a tipping point that has catastrophic consequences. We cannot say, however, that we were not warned.”

The past warns us about the future and rare is the person who has not heard of global warming, biodiversity loss, climate change and sustainable development goals. Frankopan is a historian. The book makes no claims about what the future holds. It merely warns us, as human species, that we should learn from the past and be careful. 

The world population will peak at almost 10 billion, or a bit lower, around 2065. Therefore, there are concerns about the earth’s carrying capacity and the adverse consequences of such a large human population.

 In fairness, we are rightly concerned about the needs and wants of future generations, as in any definition of sustainable development, but we don’t know what kind of technology the future will bring. For example, in days pre-dating the invention of the automobile, the cities of London and New York were in a state of fright, scared that the two cities would be swamped by dung released by horses used to draw carriages. Having said this, there is no denying climate change.

The moot question is: what should be done to mitigate it? What are the policies? How much does technology cost? Is it public or private? Who pays? Who bears the responsibility, richer countries or poorer ones? This is the domain of climate negotiations, where richer nations, responsible for most damage, have defaulted on their obligations.

Instead, it is fashionable to point a finger at China and India. The future, and negotiations, are not terrains covered in this book. But since no individual is independent of subjective value judgements, China and India do figure in the author’s mentions.

Five years ago, Geeta lost her no-good husband. As in, she actually lost him--he walked out on her and she has no idea where he is. But in her remote village in India, rumor has it that Geeta killed him. And it's a rumor that just won't die.

As it happens, being known as a 'self-made' widow comes with some perks. No one messes with Geeta, harasses her, or tries to control (ahem, marry) her. It's even been good for business: no one dares to not buy her jewelry. Freedom must look good on Geeta, because now other women are asking for her 'expertise' making her an unwitting consultant for husband disposal.

And not all of them are asking nicely. 

What happens next sets in motion a chain of events that will change everything, not just for Geeta but for all the women in the village. Filled with clever criminals, second chances, and wry and witty women, Parini Shroff's The Bandit Queens is a razor-sharp debut of humor and heart that readers won't soon forget.

Author, Parini Shroff, says, "The Bandit Queens began ten years ago as a short story about women in a microloan group and the power of money. When I wrote it as a novel during the pandemic, it blossomed into a dark comedy about wickedly funny, sharp and clever women making their own choices in a world trying to snatch those choices. Once the ensemble cast of female characters had been drawn, there was no stopping these rambunctious women. Isolated, they felt powerless; but together, the strong bonds of their female friendship made the impossible suddenly achievable. It was then that I realized the heart of this book isn't about what money can do, it's about what friendship can. I grew to love and admire these sassy, fierce women and their escalating antics, and it is my hope readers will as well."

Associate Publisher, Rahul Soni, says, "Parini Shroff's The Bandit Queens is a dark, funny, sharp, wicked debut that deals with many weighty themes with a light but sure hand. It's a book that I've been supremely excited about ever since I read the early draft, and one that I've chased a long time to be able to publish. I'm so glad that we're bringing it out in India, where I know it will resonate with and delight many, many readers. The longlisting for the Women's Prize for Fiction will be just the first of many richly deserved accolades coming Parini's way, I'm sure!"

About the Author Parini Shroff received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied under Elizabeth McCracken, Alexander Chee, and Cristina García. She is a practicing attorney and currently lives in the Bay Area. 

The Bandit Queens is her debut novel.

In the final section of SB Divya’s science-fiction novel, Meru, the protagonist, Jayanthi, says, “Human ingenuity led to the development of alloys and constructs.” Although, for a moment, it looks like she’s boasting about the achievements of humankind, her heart truly lies in asking a committee for an opportunity to prove that her species is capable of taking care of the eponymous planet. And why does she do that? It’s because Pushkara, an alloy (a post-human descendant), argues that since people haven’t respected the Earth much, they would be inclined to pollute another planet as well. The futuristic novel, set in a world beyond Earth, documents an expedition aimed at finding other habitable planets.

Pushkara, obviously, has a valid reason to keep Meru out of reach of humans. Nevertheless, as the author parts the curtains of the world she’s created, he turns out to be the antagonist, who will go to any extent to defeat Jayanthi. But how does Meru become the pie that everybody wants to taste? It apparently has “similar gravity”.

Even so, it isn’t free from problems. For instance, the higher amount of oxygen (at nearly 45 percent of the atmosphere), “would cause lung and vision disorders, along with general oxidative damage at the cellular level”.

Jayanthi, unlike Pushkara, doesn’t hold any grudges against other beings. Perhaps, her easygoing attitude springs from the fact that she was raised by alloys. And her undiminishing penchant for exploring space provides her with the spirit to put together a plan in which she’ll be able to travel to Meru and conduct some experiments. She won’t live there alone though, as her alloy pilot, named Vaha, will accompany her. Once they reach the new planet, however, their friendship slowly turns into love, and the novel transforms into an adventurous coming-of-age ride that takes the two on a trip around the solar system.

Divya has given this routine romantic drama quite a spin by removing the boundaries that differentiate humans from other sentient beings. Both Vaha and Jayanthi, who’re under-confident in the beginning, inspire and draw strength from each other as the novel progresses.

Meru isn’t a quick read.  Not because it is about 430 pages long, but because it requires a lot of attention to understand and imagine the world beyond the stars. Divya sprinkles astounding nuggets of information, such as the height of the alloys (as tall as trees) and the importance of tarawans (alloys, who work in the field of reproduction), along the course of the narrative without steering the plot away from its crux. She writes about how alloys don’t give birth the human way. They design their progeny by combining the maker or the parents’ genes with “other genetic information from a central data bank”.

There are, however, some passages that feel repetitive, making one feel that the author is unnecessarily pulling at the corners of colourless conversations and clarifications.What keeps the novel going though, is its underlying theory that most humans, at the end of the day, would choose to live on Earth, despite the attractions offered by other planets. It boils down to our reluctance to leave something familiar to explore new grounds. The biggest fear? Getting lost on the way. But Jayanthi doesn’t care for such fears. She has other pressing issues to attend to, but these overarching thoughts are bound to haunt the readers on the ride-along to find out if her trial runs meet with success.

In Meru, Divya casts an empathetic gaze upon all of humanity and its creations. She also lets us off the hook for the destruction we have caused. Put simply, she seems to be optimistic about where humankind is headed. How’s that for a change? 

The title of Vivaan Shah’s new novel, The Forsaken Wilderness, sort of prepares readers for what is in the offing—humans venturing into the abandoned wild. In this case, it is the climb up the perilous peak of Ranibaug in the Himalayas.

Embarking on this unprecedented adventure is professor Chaturvedi, founder of a mountaineering institute in Uttarakhand, who is on a spiritual journey, accompanied by Shera, a former guide, and an unnamed narrator, who, the readers are told, is a civil engineer.

Shah’s recreation of the intricate details, especially those about the technicalities of mountaineering and scientific theories that he has decoded in an accessible language, indicate an in-depth research on the author’s part. Contrary to the information that many might find new or alien, his characters are relatable, making readers wonder if they are inspired from real-life people.  

On the face of it, the four-part book, with its pace and the gripping style of event narration, gives off the energy of a thriller, but a few chapters in, it morphs into science fiction, thanks to Shah’s vivid descriptions that successfully create a mystical world that transcends human imagination. His flights of fancy are in full bloom, particularly when he writes about the cave under the cliff at Ranibaug, or his account of a bird-like-creature inhabiting it.

The author thrives in the unexpected, the most obvious example being his choice of locale. Shah has set the novel mostly in Garhwal, Uttarakhand––a place with the reputation of being laid- back, and where one doesn’t expect the kind of fast-paced action the book offers.

The other is the interactive element of his prose, allowing the reader to take up the identity of the unnamed narrator. The takeaway from the tale, however, is the author’s nuanced understanding of death, which he has exhibited in his earlier works as well.  

Notwithstanding Shah’s dexterity at telling an engaging story, the plot in the latter half dwindles away into a moralistic/religious harangue, in what perhaps was an attempt at humour by the author. He, however, does not always land the punch sucessfully. For instance, describing one of Professor Chaturvedi’s spiritual consultations, Shah writes, “Being a devout practitioner of the act of pilgrimage and possessing faith in the potential therein to absolve one’s misdeeds, he consulted with a swami––Shree Shree Guru Dev Atal-Anivaarya Natija (at times spelt with a double ‘e’ depending on the passage of the moon),a name of his own fashioning…” What begins as a promising read gets a little muddled up towards the end, but whether it was done purposefully to create a milieu of confusion to aid the plot is unclear.Nevertheless, it is a book that will appeal to readers of all ages.

Uncensored fictional accounts of those living at the intersection of caste discrimination and poverty often evade mainstream English literature, the production of which, through lineage and dominance, is predominantly an upper- caste, upper-class phenomenon in India.

To break barriers,whether personal or systemic, is no easy task. Against this backdrop, it is translation
that gives us access to the richness of Bangla literature, a significant part of which is dedicated to works on social disparity, written with great empathy and a desire to bring about social change.

Full marks to V Ramaswamy for this brilliant and seemingly effortless translation of Manoranjan Byapari’s The Nemesis,the second book in his Chandal Jibon trilogy, which is infused with bits of transcribed phrases embedded for emphasis and atmosphere.

Jibon, the protagonist, did not want to be called chandal Jibon. In fact, he did not quite choose or relish being born in a chandal (of Namasudra caste) family. He was just born. And the caste of his parents condemned him to the harshest life of hunger, humiliation and violence.

In this loosely autobiographical novel, Byapari has woven his life story into a work of fiction. While chandal Jibon is the protagonist’s caste and first name respectively, the words also mean “life of the chandal”,and this individual tale maps the destiny of an entire community.

In this volume, the runaway boy of penniless refugee parents has now grown to adulthood and grapples with the twin concerns of livelihood and of what to make of his life.Jibon’s coming-of-age coincides with the flashpoint of the Naxalite movement in Bengal in the early 70s. Sustenance and survival are difficult enough; therefore, politics holds no grand solutions. Yet, the everyday violence he is subjected to,and what he witnesses hanging around various tea stalls, offers no other recourse, but a way out via greater, organised reprisal. As luck would have it,a friend tampering with a wall brands him a Naxalite.

He is dragged into the movement’s fiery belly when advancing policemen with automatics are fended off with crude handmade bombs. This misstep agonises his ailing father, and to save Jibon’s life,the family relocates to a refugee resettlement village in the dreaded Dandakaranya, now in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar.

This shift gives Jibon his first love and amoebic dysentery. Used to milder climate, pliable soil and the water bodies of the greater Padma basin and delta, no refugee family likes their new home or can eke out
a living here on varied millet and hardy indigenous pulses like kulith (horse gram). Leaving is almost impossible. Desperation, violence and ticketless travel bring him back to Jadavpur in Kolkata.

The author’s super-power is that he writes of Jibon’s rage through the prism of his own. He writes of the protagonist’s experiences by having intimately known each blow, each insult and many consecutive nights of hunger. And he knows the topography of his tales so profoundly that his stories are intricate with tiny portraits that detail the lifestyles, places and subjects he explores. Rickshaw-pullers, the unemployed, guards, labourers, criminals and househelp, as friends, reveal their struggles, whether in cities or in familiar rural areas. This master storyteller relies on his craft and innate love for literature to transform lived experiences into a panorama of caste sufferings that are ubiquitous, yet go unnoticed.

A common thread that runs through Jibon and his associates’ experiences is the role of government officials in dominance and torture, in not aiding but making things much worse for men like him. Whether employees in ration shops, ticket checkers, the police, procurement officers or government liaison officials in Bastar, all are out to wring money out of the poorest of poor, sometimes using brute force.

The true mark of a great book is when it opens out worlds inaccessible, and leaves knots within the reader. The telling has all the markers of an epic. Militant in its condemnation of things as they are, this reorients much of our mainstream thought processes and points a finger at each of us.

British writer and historian Patrick French died in London after battling cancer for four years, said his family.

Writer and historian William Dalrymple wrote on Twitter: "Heartbroken to hear about the death of Patrick French, who I have loved and admired since we were both thirteen, and who was the Best Man at my wedding. He was funny & clever & charming, always full of enthusiasm & energy. He was also the greatest biographer of our generation."

Patrick French was born in England in 1966 and studied literature at Edinburgh University. He wrote Younghusband; Liberty or Death; Tibet, Tibet; and The World Is What It Is, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize. 

He was also the winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award. 

Heartbroken to hear about the death of Patrick French, who I have loved and admired since we were both thirteen, and who was the Best Man at my wedding. He was funny & clever & charming, always full of enthusiasm & energy. He was also the greatest biographer of our generation.

— William Dalrymple (@DalrympleWill) March 16, 2023

CHENNAI: Writer Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel "Pyre" (original title, Pookuzhi) has been long-listed for International Booker Prize 2023.

It is among 13 books from across Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America to make it to the longlist of the International Booker Prize 2023, announced by the Booker Prize Foundation on Tuesday.

The Tamil version is dedicated to R. Ilavarasan, a Dalit youth who was discovered dead on a railway track after his inter-caste marriage with a dominant caste woman saw him being targetted and eventually the woman forcefully separated from him.

Reacting to it, Perumal Murugan told The New Indian Express, "I am happy that the novel has been selected for the long list. I wrote the novel in 2012 while its English translation came out in 2017 and the UK edition came in 2021".
   
When asked about the book and "honour" killing, the subject it dealt with, Perumal Murgan said, he believes that speaking about the subject will create more awareness about it.

"I don't believe a novel will bring a drastic change immediately, however, it is a way of spreading the views. When topics such as "honour" killing are discussed in literature, cinema and news, there is a chance of it changing the mind of the people. Such incidents will also get reported," Murugan added.
  
With this Murugan, 56, has become the first Tamil writer to make it to the prestigious list with his 2016 book "Pyre", which is translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. "Pyre" tells the tale of an inter-caste couple who elope, setting in motion a story of terrifying foreboding.

From this longlist, six books will be shortlisted for this year's prize at the London Book Fair on April 18.

The winner of the International Booker Prize 2023 will be announced at a ceremony at Sky Garden in London on May 23, with the prize money of GBP 50,000 also divided equally between the author and translator.

The Tamil Nadu-born author, scholar and poet have written 10 novels, five collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry. He won the Sahitya Akademi's Translation Prize for his novel 'Madhorubhagan', translated by Vasudevan as 'One Part Woman'.