Identifying the best writers of a country as linguistically diverse as India is an exercise as ambitious as it is fraught with conceit. David Davidar, veteran editor and current publisher of New Delhi-based Aleph Book Company, pleads guilty on both counts in the introduction to his finely-curated anthology, A Case of Indian Marvels: Dazzling Stories from the Country’s Finest New Writers — a collection of short fiction by 40 writers, all of whom were 40 years or younger in 2020.
Most of the works are originally written in English, with just a handful translated from other languages (Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Kannada, and Telugu). In an email interview, he shares what marks this generation of writers. Edited excerpts:
In the introduction, you refer to the “golden generation” of Indian writers — those who published for about 20 years following Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ in 1981. The writers collected here are limited to those under 40 as of 2020. Do you discern differences between them?
The stories of these writers belonging to the millennial and Generation Z generations are very diverse, and that is as it should be. Some of them are cast in the classical social realist mode, as was the case with a significant proportion of the generation that preceded them; others are written as fables or with dollops of magic realism or mythology or fantasy woven in.
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The range is impressive. Besides the variations in style, it was interesting to me that the writers were scattered all over the country unlike the previous generation, of whom a large number lived in the major metros. It was also encouraging to find that the majority lived in India. Given the fact that most of them write in English, their backgrounds are fairly similar. I think it’s too early in the careers of these writers to make a fair comparison with the writers of the “golden generation”. What one can say without reservation is that they are very talented and we can expect some major books from them in years to come.
‘The stories of these 40 writers belonging to the millennial and Generation Z generations are very diverse,’ says Davidar
How did you identify the 40 stories?
This selection is focused on the work of writers under 40, and not the finest short fiction put out by all Indian writers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The selection process was straightforward. I was aware of the work of roughly half the writers represented in this anthology, as they had won major prizes or published well-regarded books — writers like Kanishk Tharoor, Meena Kandasamy, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Madhuri Vijay, Karan Madhok, and Avinuo Kire, to name a few. Others were brought to my attention by various observers of the literary scene or plucked out of short-story collections; yet others were put on the longlist by my editorial colleagues. I then whittled it down to the final 40. It frustrated me that we couldn’t unearth more writers from languages other than English; but that apart, I think this is an excellent selection of next generation stars.
You point out that only half of these 40 writers have as yet published books. Is it possible to infer that there are increasingly large numbers of platforms for them to publish their short stories?
Yes, without question, in the digital era writers can publish on many more platforms than existed in the past. I am not sure whether we need more platforms. What I think is necessary is for work that appears on these platforms to be filtered better so a lot of dreck is eliminated. Moreover, many of these online journals and other platforms could be marketed more aggressively to readers so the work of writers receives a great deal more visibility.
“This selection is focused on the work of writers under 40, and not the finest short fiction put out by all Indian writers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries,” says Davidar | Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy
While introducing a collection of short stories, Philip Hensher once wrote that he wanted to “suggest what the short story still does well”. How would you sum up what it does well based on your collection?
I think what the short story in India continues to do well is reflect the reality of our country in original and insightful ways. There is a lot about our society that is dysfunctional, and this is only getting worse, and I feel many of the stories [here] capture the external disrepair and hidden rot brilliantly — either realistically or allusively.
You write: “The slow drip of sectarian hatred into the open veins of our society, and the all-out assault on liberal values and creative expression... will permanently reshape the country — and not for the better. How will our writers transmute these dangerous and depressing times into art?” Will this shape the collective output of literary fiction and non-fiction for a generation to come?
It is difficult to predict what form literary works shaped by the present time will take. Unlike journalism, we will probably have to wait for a while before we are able to see how the excesses of our era have percolated into the creative consciousness of the writers concerned and emerged as fully formed novels. Great literature cannot be hurried. However, I have no doubt that our melancholy time will be reborn in the literature of the future.
A Case of Indian Marvels
₹999
Trade Indian publishing, especially in English, is now driven by non-fiction. Is this a worry?
Big, ambitious, eye-opening non-fiction is the most exciting thing about the Indian writing and publishing scene at the moment. This was long overdue because for a country with our complexity and history there simply wasn’t enough great non-fiction being written. Much of it in the past was either academic and dull or too superficial to be of any worth. Now the scene is different, and every year you have two or three books that are magnificent. I am not worried about the lack of stunning literary fiction; if a decade or so passes without major novels, it’s not a big deal. Indian literary fiction will eventually be taken off the ventilator and restored to rude good health, and I expect a fair few of the writers represented in this anthology to be responsible for the turnaround.
Do publishers and commissioning editors have a bigger role to play here?
I think it’s almost impossible to commission outstanding novels on the basis of sample chapters or a published story or two; you have to wait for them to happen. One positive development that I hope is irreversible is that we no longer wait for a book to be hailed overseas before we decide whether it’s good or not. In fact, in the past decade and a half, very few Indian novels have been major successes in the West, and the reaction to them here has been muted, if not mixed.
mini.kapoor@thehindu.co.in
