The Magic of Facts

Sometimes you have to wonder if everyone in India is writing a novel. In New Delhi, for instance, the roster of published novelists includes newspaper editors, gossip columnists, ex-bureaucrats, housewives, college teachers, advertising executives, a former Prime Minister and the present spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs. A trip to the fiction section of any Indian bookstore will show that Indians are churning out novels like chapatis these days; shelf after shelf bursts with paperbacks telling of the alienation and loneliness of Indians who've moved to America, the depression and misery of Indians who haven't, the stupendously complicated family lives...