The empire writes back

The New York Times recommends 'The Essential J.M. Coetzee':

I am ever and always in love with “Foe” (1986), which, from a bare plot summary, may sound like one of many the-empire-writes-back sequels of the English canon — Jean Rhys’s “Wide Sargasso Sea” (an Antillean “Jane Eyre”), Peter Carey’s “Jack Maggs” (an Antipodean “Great Expectations”). Two generations of comp-lit students have gorged now on the novel’s irresolvable tangle of speech and writing, gender and colonialism, and wrung every drop of theory from its fewer than 160 pages. But “Foe,” written in an extraordinary ventriloquism of 18th-century English, is so much more than a postcolonial just-so story, and much more, too, than a reverse Robinsonade. (Jason Farago)

India Today interviews writer Durjoy Datta.

4. Do you believe contemporary India wants to read simple stories penned by you or authors like Chetan Bhagat or Amish instead of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot? Or is it just a section of readers that we always talk about?

I think the distinction they should first make is do they want to read simple stories by Chetan, Amish or me, and other Indian/Subcontinent writers than picking out Austen, Brontë or Eliot. One of the primary reasons why our books work is because these are our stories. I grew up on a diet on western novels and when the first batch of campus novels hit, I was pleasantly surprised to read them. The names, the settings, the families, everything seemed so familiar. Also, readers eventually find the books they want to read. (Tiasa Bhowal)