The year of fiction in Indian publishing
Fiction on the Indian publishing scene had but faded away at about this time last year, with about three non-fiction titles releasing for every novel. However, 2017 turned the tide, and some strong novels struck a chord both with the readers and in the market.
Poulomi Chatterjee, editor-in-chief and publisher at Hachette India, agrees, at the same time pointing out that nonfiction has continued to rule the market, with titles like Muhammad Yunus’ A World of Three Zeros, Subroto Bagchi’s Sell, Alan Rosling’s Boom Country, and Ankit Lal’s India Social. Chatterjee, though, feels that there certainly have been strong fiction titles that have made their mark, for instance, Pradeep Sebastian’s dream of a book on books, The Book Hunters of Katpadi, Arunava Sinha’s excellent translation of Moti Nandy’s short stories, titled KickOff, and Sanjay Bahadur’s military thriller Bite of the Black Dog.
Meru Gokhale, editorin-chief, Penguin Random House, seconds Chatterjee, saying that 2017 has been the “year of literary fiction” for the publishing house, with talked-about novels like The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, The Golden House by Salman Rushdie, A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee, and A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma.
Udayan Mitra, publisher with HarperCollins India, shares, “What’s interesting to me is that the way in which fiction writers in India are responding to the environment that they live and write in has brought an edge to the books that have come out. Another notable trend is the re-emergence of short fiction which I believe has something to do with the sensibilities of both readers and writers being shaped by the age of social media.”