AUDIOBOOKS: LISTEN UP
Following Google Audiobooks and Storytel, audiobook giant Audible launched in India this November, much to the relief of subscribers who had been paying exorbitant prices to access its international portal.
Its focus has been authors with big popular readership, like Durjoy Datta, Devdutt Pattanaik, Amish Tripathi, with a few selfhelp titles thrown in. Of the 200,000-odd titles, about 400 are Indian. Two of the early highlights are Durjoy Datta’s The Last Boy
to Fall in Love, narrated by Rasika Dugal and Sikander Kher, and S. Hussain Zaidi and Jane Borges’s
Mafia Queens of Mumbai, narrated by Radhika Apte, Kalki Koechlin and Rajkummar Rao.
Among international titles, there’s a lot to choose from. Pick up Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy
(a BBC production available). Clare Dane’s voice deadpanning through The Handmaid’s Tale masterfully captures its dystopia. Arundhati Roy’s narration of her
Ministry of Utmost Happiness is worth the free audible credit that comes with signing up. There are also some great Indian English titles read by non-Indians. Tania Rodrigues takes up Indian and Pakistani titles from Nilanjana Roy, Kiran Desai, Tahmima Anam and Kamila Shamsie and tailors her accent and pace differently to each book.
However, for Indian titles, especially Hindi, Storytel is the place to go. One listen to the voice artist Shashwita reading Premchand’s Godan will have you hooked. Storytel has some masterpieces of Hindi literature, from the likes of Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’ and Amritlal Nagar, narrated to perfection. It also has titles in Urdu and Marathi, and we recommend Fawad Khan’s sidesplitting narration of Ibn-e-Insha’s classic Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab and his equally excellent narration of
Kuttay, Urdu Adab Mein by Saadat Hasan Manto.