'Tis the season for book festivals. Last weekend, there were ones in Baltimore and Washington, DC. The biggest one in the world has just kicked off again in Frankfurt, Germany.
This year, the featured country is India (a repeat from the fair of '86).
One of the authors mentioned in a Deutsche Welle website article is Vikram Chandra, who I heard years ago when he was in residence at GWU in DC. (I thought, at the time, that his writing was very evocative, but his delivery was sorta monotonous.)
Here's an excerpt:
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As India takes center stage at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it's not the Salman Rushdies, Arundhati Roys and Vikram Seths, but a new generation of authors writing in English who are making waves...
Many have moved beyond the traditional Anglophone market to enter European territory, as publishers from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have trickled into India in recent years in search of the next literary sensation.
"The Empire writes back"
Ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair, German publishers in particular have been scrambling to buy Indian rights and have undertaken a wave of translations.
More than 25 translated works of fiction have emerged in the German market alone this year. They include books by Altaf Tyrewala, Samit Basu, Suketu Mehta, Vikram Chandra, Kiran Nagarkar, Thrity Umrigar, Shobha De and Raj Kamal Jha.
“Indian writing in English has become a bit of a trend,” said Shashi Tharoor, author and Indian candidate for the post of the next UN secretary general, speaking at a recent press conference in Berlin. Tharoor, whose books “Show Business” and “Nehru: The Invention of India” were translated into German this year, compared the boom to the flowering of Latin American writers in the 1970s and '80s. “In a way it’s like the Empire writing back,” he said.
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I guess you could call it postcolonial revenge.
Meanwhile, I imagine that the producers of the Indian Vibes radio show in Frankfurt are taking advantage of the Indian focus and writers at the bookfair.
When I first visited Frankfurt, back in '99, I went to the community radio station, Radio X (91.8 fm), and tried to interview the station manager, Petra Klaus. She's also coproducer of a show specialising in UK Indian stuff (Talvin Singh, asian dub foundation, cornershop, etc.) Unfortunately, my minidisc reocorder went kaput, so I gave up. (She also didn't have much time to spare, that day.)
The thing that was never clear to me, at the time, was to what degree the show was essentializing or, perhaps, stereotyping indian culture and British indian culture. But, after doing the show for 7 or 8 years, I certainly expect by now, the producers (Klaus and DJ Kurian) have got a feel for the music and musicians and other creative people they've covered (filmmakers, visual artists, etc.).
It can be tricky to figure out racial attitudes (and attitudes toward foreigners) in another country, when you're just visiting. The typical tourist lacks historical and social context, and has to rely on their own biased filters. But that's what travel is all about, soaking in new environments.