Lifestyle
What will be in, what will be out, what’s going to be hot and what’s not, experts tell us about books that threaten to stir a storm in 2017
Updated : Dec 05, 2017, 01:59 PM IST
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2017 looks like it will be the year of women writers. At Juggernaut, we are publishing impressive debuts by three young women — Anita Sivakumaran, Tashan Mehta and Devi Yesodharan. And the new novels of two of the most promising voices in the Indian literary landscape — Meena Kandasamy and Parvati Sharma.
And of course, 2017 will be the year of Arundhati Roy. I am hugely curious to read the new novel. It is certainly going to be the most talked about book of the year. Seriously, women writers are all set to own the year.
I am also looking forward to Ali Akbar Natiq’s first novel (in English from Urdu) and Aniruddan Vasudevan’s debut short story collection (in Tamil). I know they are both in work in progress and should be in print later this year. And I also can’t wait for the new China Mieville – The Last Days Of New Paris to reach India.
It’s hard to be crystal ball gazing, but I think 2017 will be an interesting year for Indian publishing. Among genres, I see that non-fiction will further consolidate in the market, as it has for the past few years even as fiction — both literary and commercial — continue to.
Children’s fiction too looks like it’s going to be a promising space in the coming year. We at Rupa are coming out with a series of Mighty Raju pictorial books, combining educational content with entertainment.
I expect e-books to grow exponentially. The digital space — in marketing and consumption of books — grew steadily in 2016, especially in the B towns. This year, I think it will spread to the C towns, where the reading culture is taking root.
The two biggest books for me in the coming year will be the latest ones from Arundhati Roy, who’s returning after a two decade hiatus from writing fiction, and Mohsin Hamid.
There’s always a market for commercial and literary fiction, but the Indian publishing industry is slowly leaning towards more than those dealing with socio-political issues and business. Start-ups and new businesses are exciting new developments being talked about with success stories, autobiographies, and biographies of entrepreneurs. In light of demonetisation, books on the economy are in high demand as we try to make sense of the current situation.
With new books from Devdutt Pattanaik, Wendell Rodricks and Pav Singh, along with a surprise offering from Pavan K Varma, on the horizon, 2017 looks like an exciting year for Siyahi as well!
Literature festivals have achieved a really interesting moment of sophistication in India. It’s not only the ones in metropolitan cities, but also ones in Chandigarh, Chennai and Bangalore. There’s one starting in Ooty too. Literature festivals appear to be ready to blossom this year.
For a while, these used to revolve around a certain celebrity, but now these festivals have a rich range, and depth and intensity of authors from across genres. So whether it is Jaipur Literature Festival, which will mark its tenth year, or Tata Literature Live, Kala Ghoda or others, the more, the better.
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