All posts in the ‘ Books ’ Category

I’m currently rereading Italian journalist Tiziano Terzani’s A Fortune-Teller Told Me, one of my all-time favorite travel books. Terzani (1938-2004) reported on some of the most momentous events of the late twentieth century, including the North Vietnamese takeover of Saigon in 1975. He worked and lived for much of his life in Asia. In 1976, a fortune-teller in Hong Kong told him not to travel by air for the whole of 1993. When the time came, instead of …Read More

Someone asked me how I thought of the title for this book. It came from an ear worm–adapted a bit. Abinath, the pharmacist of Abinath’s Apothecary in my Jana Bibi series, is developing an alphabet of vitamins. He figures vitamins A, B, C, and so forth are all very well, but why stop with the ones everyone knows? He’s gotten to L. At the Giant Roller Skating Rink in the town of Hamara Nagar (Our Town), the current …Read More

There’s a new publicity pic on the flap of the back cover of my new book, Love Potion Number 10. As for the title, here’s how that happened: In the book, it’s 1961, and at the Giant Roller Skating Rink in the (fictional) town of Hamara Nagar, they’re always playing the Clovers’ 1959 hit, Love Potion Number 9. Abinath, the local apothecary, just can’t get the tune out of his mind. It seems like the perfect name for …Read More

A minor character in Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is Mr. Abinath, the town’s dispensing chemist. He plays a bigger role in book two, Love Potion Number 10 (scheduled to come out in May, 2013.) His apothecary is crammed full of medicines and cosmetics, including a line of vitamins he is developing. He wants to go beyond the commonly known vitamins (A, B, C, D, etc.) and formulate a concoction for every letter of the alphabet. I got the …Read More

Jana’s in India, folks. Well of course she’s in India. That’s where Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is set. What I mean is, in addition to the original book put out by Henry Holt (a MacMillan company), soon there will be an edition for sale on the Indian subcontinent, published by Random House India. RHI offices are in a high-rise building in Noida, a glittering modern town across the river from Delhi. Noida didn’t even exist when I was growing …Read More

I saw a used hard-cover copy of the 2004 novel, These Foolish Things, by British author Deborah Moggach, for sale online for a mere $575.78. Never heard of that book, you say. Here’s a clue: it’s about British pensioners who land in a retirement home in India and…. Oh, right, right, it was the inspiration for this spring’s hit movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. For the 2012 paperback edition of the book, not surprisingly, they changed the …Read More

To celebrate publication day, another drawing from Joanna Levine at Holt: And to think I didn’t realize Mr. Ganguly could read! I should have made that a plot element. I could have done so. Irene Pepperberg, who demonstrated a lot about parrot intelligence to skeptical human beings, actually did teach her African gray to read several letter combinations phonetically. How we humans underestimate–and abuse–these remarkable birds is explored in journalist Mira Tweti’s excellent book, Of Parrots and People: …Read More

P for publication, that is. Tomorrow, Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes gets released. Makes you think: while the books have been sitting in boxes in warehouses, have they gotten restless? Are they like prisoners waiting to get out of jail? Zoo animals trying to escape from their cages? Or are they like pet birds that seem tame enough until someone leaves a door open—and then, out they fly? A few months ago, my sister Lee sent me this Victorian …Read More

Recently, I’ve read three books on aspects of Indian life that most of us will never know first hand. Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Random House, New York, 2012) redefined the word “gripping” for me: the narrative got me by the throat. She describes life in the Annawadi slum, in sight of the glittering high-rise hotels and international airport of Mumbai. The garbage-sorters of this settlement strive heroically for …Read More