From poetry to fiction and everything in between, the march of sleepyheads seems unstoppable. While the past year ablated all but the mighty glitter of commercial successes, this one clearly demonstrates that the genre of literary fiction and nonfiction are far from waning. The upcoming books of 2017 are as immersive and eclectic as the literary genre of cacography.
The author of Man Booker for Fiction 1997 winner The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy is slated to release her second book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness after a twenty-year-old extended sabbatical from writing. The novel experiments with form and the reader’s expectations for it are already high.
Booker shortlisted, celebrated novelist Jeet Thayil’s latest work The Book of Chocolate Saints on Newton Francis Xavier–a blocked poet, serial seducer, reformed alcoholic, all-around wild man and India’s greatest living painter will be released by Aleph Books. Irwin Allan Sealy will also come up with her long poem Zelaldinus. Penguin Random House will add to the legacy of Perumal Murugan by commissioning the translation for Seasons of the Palm, the story of a young untouchable farmhand.
Nadeem Aslam’s The Golden Legend, set in contemporary Pakistan will see the sun in the second half of the year. Mohsin Hamid, the prolific author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist will come up with ExitWest, a love story set against the backdrop of the international refugee crisis. Amit Chaudhari’s Friend of My Youth, a meditation on the passage of time will tread the fine line between fiction and nonfiction. They will be published by Penguin Random House.
Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger: A History of the Present, which goes back to the eighteenth and nineteenth century to explain the roots of the hatred, racism and violence widely seen today; Sagarika Ghose’s new biography of Indira Gandhi; and Meena Kandasami’s When I Hit You, Portrait of the Young Writer as a Wife, a harrowing novel of an abusive marriage will be published by Juggernaut Books.
Sabyn Javeri’s Nobody Killed Her, a veiled portrait of the life and assassination of a former Prime Minister (who shall not to named in public) will also garner a lot of attention this year.
Anuja Chauhan’s Baaz, a romance set against an IAF backdrop during the 1971 war, is HarperCollins’ big April release.
It is also an exciting year for Bollywood readers, as Nawaznama, a memoir of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, co-written with Rituparna Chatterjee and Karan Johar’s biography An Unsuitable Boy, co-written with Poonam Saxena will be released this year. Another awaited release of the year is HarperCollins’ Khullam Khulla: Rishi Kapoor Uncensored.
And finally, Lone Fox Dancing, Ruskin Bond’s memoir, spanning a literary career of eight decades, and V.S. Naipaul’s India Essays, collected for the first time by Picador-Pan Macmillan will also be released this year.
Cheers! And have a year of good reads.
