Amol Sharma in the Wall Street Journal:
I caught up with Chiki Sarkar, editor-in-chief of Random House India, on the sidelines here. She’s been using the festival to get feedback from friends in the publishing industry about a new book that she’s particularly excited about.
“Quarantine,” by first-time author Rahul Metha, is a collection of stories about gay Indian American men that Random House is set to publish in April. As Chiki describes it, “It’s about men with complicated relationships and uncertain futures – and it’s in a voice I’ve never heard from an Indian.”
The publisher’s blurb she showed me highlights a few of the angles the book takes: a story where lovers break up while they’re on holiday; another where a couple goes to a night-club intent on cheating on each other; another in which a man prepares his grandmother for her U.S. citizenship test.
Chiki says there will definitely be some “small town” resistance in India to stories about the relationship issues of gay couples, but says overall, India is ready for such themes. She pointed to a ruling last summer by New Delhi’s highest court that struck down a ban on homosexuality. (The Supreme Court is reviewing the issue.) More:
Also read John Elliott at Riding the Elephant: Books and crowds in sunny Jaipur
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