William Dalrymple, Salman Rushdie top authors' reading list in 2012
When leading authors like Aravind Adiga, Jeet Thayil and Amit Chaudhuri were not writing in 2012, they were reading a lot - be it works of Naresh Fernandes, William Dalrymple or Anjali Joseph.
Mumbai-based journalist Fernandes' book "Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age" topped the reading list of both 2008 Booker Prize winner Adiga and this year's Booker-nominated writer Thayil.
According to Adiga, "Taj Mahal Foxtrot" is a "loving and scholarly tribute to India's pioneering jazz musicians, and the city that they lived and worked in". Two other books he liked were Mustansir Dalvi's new translation of the poetry of Iqbal - "Taking Issue and Allah's Answer" and Gopalakrishna Pai's Kannada novel "Swapna Saraswata"
"Dalvi's translation introduces Iqbal to a new generation of Indian readers. Well written and superbly researched, 'Swapna Saraswata' is the story of how Goa's Saraswat community spread across south India after being forced to leave their homeland during Portuguese rule. It has gone into several reprints in Karnataka, and will be a hit across India if it finds a good translator," Adiga told PTI.
Asked about his top reads during the year, Thayil's list went thus: "Taj Mahal Foxtrot", "Righteous Republic" by Ananya Vajpeyi, "Return of a King" by Dalrymple, "Dom Moraes: Selected Poems" (edited by Ranjit Hoskote), "The Wildings" by Nilanjana Roy, and "Drifting House" by Krys Lee.
Chaudhuri named Joseph's "Another Country", Palash Mehrotra's "The Butterfly Generation" and Anand Thakore's "Elephant Bathing" as his top reads.
'Another Country' is a brief, poetic novel about the attrition
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