‘I’m not against a filmmaker willing to adapt my book, I’m against the attitude of people in Bollywood’

For a while now, Bollywood has been cashing in on best-selling books by adapting them into mainstream cinema — 3 Idiots, 2 States and Half Girlfriend being popular examples of films made on titles by Chetan Bhagat. Amish Tripathi’s Shiva trilogy is also set to be turned into a movie. While this seems like a way for authors to widen their commercial reach, Novoneel Chakraborty has his reservations.

“I’m not against a filmmaker willing to adapt my book, I am against the attitude of some people in the Hindi film industry. Firstly, 90% of them don’t read [the book]. Secondly, they only see how many copies are sold... If you want to make a story [on my book], make it for the content,” says Novoneel, who recently released his book, Forever Is A Lie.

The author, whose romantic thriller, The Stranger Series, took him to another tangent of popularity among book lovers, has been writing for almost a decade. His other works include That Kiss In The Rain, EX ...a twisted love story, and Black Suits You.

The 30-year-old adds that writing a thriller can get taxing. “This is my bread and butter, which means that in India, where reading is a luxury, I need to churn out more books. That puts a little pressure on my creativity. It’s more so with thrillers unlike romance for which you still have personal or a friend’s experience to fall back on,” he says. While the genre of love stories is widely read in India, romantic thriller has yet to branch out in a similar manner. Did Novoneel never think of starting out with a less complex genre? “An author doesn’t choose the story, the story chooses him. I realised my voice is in romantic thrillers,” he says.

If you want to adapt a book into a film, do so for its content and not for how many copies were sold NOVONEEL CHAKRABORTY, AUTHOR AUTHOR NOVONEEL CHAKRABORTY SAYS HE WANTS TO BE VALUED FOR THE CONTENT HE GENERATES FOR THE PEOPLE

PHOTOFACEBOOK/ NOVONEEL CHAKRABORTY