Indian Literature Seeks Wider Audience

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Indian Literature Seeks Wider Audience

 

By Arthur Max,

Associated Press Writer

 

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/10/03/entertainment/e100927D39.DTL

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http://tinyurl.com/k37yx

 

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)

 

Indian literature, already known around the world for such

English-language authors as Salman Rushdie and Rohinton

Mistry, is reaching out to a broader audience for works in

dozens of Indian languages at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

 

[....]

 

The decision to highlight India for the second time in 20

years at the 58-year-old fair reflected its growing impact on

the world scene as a rising economic and political power.

India also was the focus of the World Economic Forum of

global business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland,

earlier this year.

 

India has long produced influential writers in English. Among

the 70 Indian writers expected to attend this year's fair are

novelist, essayist and diplomat Shashi Tharoor, who had

been on the short list to become U.N. secretary general, and

best-selling writers Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth.

 

But India also is promoting writers in some of its other 24

official languages commonly spoken in the nation of 1.1

billion people, which has hundreds more local languages and

thousands of dialects. Of the 38 writers sponsored at the fair

by the government-run National Book Trust, only 12 write in

English.

 

"Languages like Telugu and Tamil have a 1,000-year-old

history. So the literature has to relate to the modern world,

and be true to its own tradition and history," said U.R.

Ananthamurthy, whose poetry in the south Indian language

of Kannada has been translated into several European

languages.

 

Of the 80,000 Indian titles published each year, about

50,000 are in regional languages, but they have been widely

neglected in the international market.

 

Rushdie, author of the classic "Midnight's Children," caused

controversy in 1997 when he published an anthology of

Indian writing of the previous 50 years. Of the 32 pieces in

the collection, only one did not originate in English.

 

Regional writers bring out more authentic voices. They

include women and authors from castes and classes that are

making themselves heard for the first time.

 

"You are now looking at contemporary India," said writer

Ashok Vajpeyi, with new works moving away from what he

called the two-dimensional spiritual India portrayed in many

stories. "This contemporary India is full of tensions, anxieties,

dreams and nightmares, which is what literature is all about."