Talking about Thrillers: A word from Thomas Abraham, CEO, Penguin Books India
Interesting development resulting from yesterday’s post It’s a Crime.
I had a call from Thomas Abraham, CEO of Penguin Books India.
Incidentally, he happens to be my publisher, but we haven’t had the pleasure of actually meeting.
Which is not as uncommon as you’d think, since authors very rarely meet the people who bring out their books. And the one occasion when we might have corrected that lacuna, during the launch of Prince of Ayodhya in New Delhi in 2003, he was out of Delhi.
Anyway, the reason he called was to correct the misimpression created by his interview in the Indian Express.
If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll recall my mentioning his comments about crime fiction authors in India and my being surprised that I was even mentioned, twelve years after my last (and only) crime novels were published.
Well, it turns out that he was misquoted in the interview.
What he actually intended to say was that while Ashok Banker had pioneered Indian English crime writing in India, and Aniruddha Bahal had most recently come out with a fairly decent thriller (in Abraham’s opinion, not mine – I haven’t read Bunker 13), there was still a huge void in the genre locally.
It’s a sign that India still awaits the kind of multiple-choices readers have in a mature publishing market such as, for example, the USA, where you have a Nelson De Mille, a John Grisham, a Tom Clancy, and five hundred and fifty other authors, all producing different sub-genres of crime or thriller fiction.
All of it selling in considerable numbers.
The part about “intellectual pretensions” was quite likely the interviewer’s own masala addition.
In any case, I found it interesting that Penguin is so positive about crime and thriller writing. Frankly I always felt it didn’t have much scope in India.
Crime has never sold very well here, barring the exceptional Agatha Christie or James Hadley Chase, or now, Grisham, et al. My reasoning is (still) that it’s because the readers who read those authors in such large numbers are actually seeking fantasy, not realistic crime writing.
So the firang settings, characters, etc are what they want. The moment you write an Indian thriller, it becomes too close to home for comfort. The fantasy-comfort factor is lost completely.
That’s my opinion, of course.
What I like is that Thomas Abraham, and the publishing house he manages, are still so open to testing the waters.
As I said before, if there are talented crime authors out there with zinger manuscripts, they should run, not walk, to the nearest post office and send off their mss to Penguin.
(And no, I’m not being paid to say this, just as I didn’t get my royalties cut for criticizing them yesterday!)
If Indian English crime fiction can produce a local De Mille, Grisham, Clancy, or whomever, hell, I’ll be one of the first to read those books!
Although my personal choices would veer more towards a desi Greg Iles, or Michael Connelly, or John Sandford.
But the point is still valid.
Indian English crime fiction can rock.
Given the right talent.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 28th, 2005 at 4:45 pm. It is filed under Ashok.
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