Indiaplaza Golden Quill Book Awards 2009 Longlist

1. INDIAPLAZA GOLDEN QUILL BOOK AWARDS 2009 Longlist Fiction & Non Fiction

2. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist – Non Fiction category Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani Since the early 1990s, India has witnessed great social, political and cultural change. As the world’s largest democracy, its most diverse nation and one of its fastest growing economies, India is now, sixty years after Independence, universally regarded as an emerging superpower. In this sweeping and comprehensive book, one the country’s finest and most dynamic minds examines the central ideas that have shaped modern India, and offers an original perspective on our past, present and future. Go Kiss The World by Subroto Bagchi Through personal anecdotes and simple words of wisdom, Subroto Bagchi brings to the young professional lessons in working and living, energizing ordinary people to lead extraordinary lives. Go Kiss the World will be an inspiration to ‘young India’, and to those who come from small-town India, urging them to recognize and develop their inner strengths, thereby helping them realize their own, unique potential.

3. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist – Non Fiction category Super Star India by Shobhaa Dé It all began when, viewing the breathless preparations for independent India’s 60th birthday celebrations--and poised then on her own sixth decade—Shobhaa Dé was struck by the thought: ‘Surely my life has taken the same trajectory as the country’s?’ In an intimate confession to her readers, she answers that question, and many more: Does India really deserve to congratulate itself? Has it lived up to the early promises it made to its people? Does the author believe in India herself? Goodnight and God Bless by Anita Nair A sparkling collection of literary essays, each one a bedtime rumination, Goodnight and God Bless is about books, writers, book events, mice, mothers, airport hotels, the wind and other such unexpectedly thought-provoking subjects, snugly interwoven with a warmly personal and anecdotal history of the author and her assorted family members.

4. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist – Non Fiction category Smoke and Mirrors by Pallavi Aiyar China is at an historical point where tradition and modernity, communism and capitalism, chaos and control, freedom and dissent, amongst other dualities rub up against each other on a daily basis. In order to remain in power through this period of fundamental and far-reaching transformations, the Chinese Communist Party must walk a tightrope, balancing and mediating the conflicting needs, desires and aspirations of its various constituencies. For Chinese people in general as well this is a challenging period requiring enormous adjustments both psychologically and materially to rapidly altering circumstances. For The Class Of 2010 by Al Raines From the Author of the bestselling November Rain, The Prayer and Soul Search Engine comes a book that will change the way a Generation thinks. The first non fiction Title from Al Raines. ALL YOU TEENAGERS OUT THERE, there has never been more young people at one time in one place in all of human history - may this book be your lighthouse when storms gather around your ship. And may you change our History for ALL TIME.

5. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist – Non Fiction category Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer Basharat Peer was born in Kashmir in 1977. He studied political science at Aligarh Muslim University and journalism at Columbia University. He has worked as a reporter at Rediff and Tehelka and has written for various publications including the Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman and Foreign Affairs where he was assistant editor. He is currently based in New York. 24X7 Marriage by Dr Nagaswami VVijay Nagaswami Vijay Nagaswami is a psychiatrist who has worked closely on relationships and with couples from all parts of the country for 25 years. Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite country by Sundeep Chakravarti

6. Longlist Fiction Category

7. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category Ammi by Saeed Mirza Mirza's narrative interweaves memories of a mother with the living political creed she believed in the egalitarian ethos of a democratic faith coupled with a deep, inquiring faith in religion. In 1938, his mother, while walking back with his father from an evening show at the Eros Cinema in Mumbai, casually removed her burqa and never donned it again. This was one of the quietest revolutions ever witnessed. Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh The first in Amitav Ghosh’s new trilogy of novels, Sea of Poppies is a stunningly vibrant and intensely human work that confirms his reputation as a master storyteller. At the heart of this epic saga is a vast ship, the Ibis. Its destiny is a tumultuous voyage across the Indian Ocean to the Mauritius Islands. As to the people on board, they are a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts.

8. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category The Japanese Wife by Kunal Basu An Indian man writes to a Japanese woman. She writes back. The pen-friends fall in love and exchange their vows over letters, then live as man and wife without ever setting eyes on each other – their intimacy of words tested finally by life's miraculous upheavals. The twelve stories in this collection are about the unexpected. Keep Off The Grass by Karan Bajaj What do you do when you are a 25-year-old Yale graduate earning half a million dollars a year as a hotshot investment banker on Wall Street? You stay the course, and become a millionaire by thirty, of course. Not if you are Samrat Ratan, born in the USA to immigrant Indian parents; you quit and embark to India on a search for your roots instead.

9. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category You Are Here by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan Hilarious and poignant at once, this bold, pacy, unputdownable book revolves around the twenty something character of Arshi, a smart, single city girl, and her relationships with friends, co-workers, and her lover. Saucy, wise and audaciously candid, this novel introduces a bold and irresistibly new voice. The Immigrant Manju Kapoor Nina is a thirty year old English lecturer, struggling to make ends meet for herself and her widowed mother. She sees herself as increasingly off the shelf—after all what prospects would an impoverished girl have without a father to marry her off? Then, unexpectedly, a proposal arrives.

10. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan When the younger players in India's cricket team find out that advertising executive Zoya Singh Solanki was born at the very moment India won the World Cup back in 1983, they are intrigued. When having breakfast with her is followed by victories on the field, they are impressed. And when not eating with her results in defeat, they decide she's a lucky charm. The nation goes a step further. Amazed at the ragtag team's sudden spurt of victories, it declares her a Goddess. Bombay Rains Bombay Girls by Anirban Bose When Adi – a small-town eighteen-year-old with a giant inferiority complex– lands a chance to study medicine in big, bad Bombay, he is overjoyed. Although plagued by the thought that his success is a fluke and hence ill gotten, he plunges headlong into the sights and sounds of this dazzling city.

11. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category KKrishna'S Konfessions by Smita Jain Kkrishnaa, the 20-something, impulsive, gutsy and unapologetically ambitious scriptwriter of television soap operas, the answer would be d) all of the above. And what she wants most right now is to retain her long-running, hugely successful primetimes show Kkangan Souten Ke. Unfortunately for her, she has writer’s block and knows it. The 3 Mistakes of My Life by Chetan Bhagat In late 2000, a young boy in Ahmedabad called Govind dreamt of owning a business. To accommodate his friends Ish and Omi’s passion, they open a cricket shop. However, nothing comes easy in a turbulent city. To realise their goals, they will have to face it all – religious politics, earthquakes, riots, unacceptable love and above all, their own mistakes. Will they make it?

12. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category Dear Popples by Anouradha Bakshi Dear Popples is a simple book. It has no clever sentences, no literary tricks, not even a trail blazing plot. What it has- is Truth. Writtem in the form of letters to her beloved popples, whom she helped & saved from one of the most heartbreaking traumas. Seance on a Sunday Afternoon Howling at the moon, slitting a vein, cyber sex . . . there are only so many ways to cope with private hells. In high-rise solitude, modern man has begun to redefine his need for society. A hundred voices are trapped on his mobile phone, but there is no head on his pillow. Haunted by tricky memories and chocolate cravings, his spirit is calling out not to the dead, but to the living.

13. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category Pink or Black by Tishaa Ever wondered about those weird teenage years where you never know what you wanted? When you felt that life was just spiraling out of control? Well, Pink or Black promises to take you right down memory lane and re-live those funny, hysterical and oddly moving moments. The Loudest Firecraker by Arun Krishnan It’s India versus Pakistan and as the excitement soars in the final over of a memorable cricket match, ten-year-old Siddharth sets off a firecracker. The blast that follows will change his life.

14. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category The Inheritors by Neel Choudhury Lohia & Co — one of India’s largest commodity traders, the country’s biggest jute supplier, owner of tea estates, as well as cement, steel, shipping and motor cycle firms, and its own insurance arm — is in trouble. Now a strike, led by aging Marxist trade union leader Hirenmoy Chakroborty, is destabilizing its Calcutta headquarters — and Aruna the bitter, power-hungry sister of Hari Lohia, the head of the dynasty, is using the opportunity to launch a covert takeover of the business with the help of her two ambitious sons. In The Country of Deceit by Shashi Deshpande There are no hostages taken in the country of deceit; no victors; only scarred lives. This understated yet compassionate examination of the nature of love, loyalty and deception establishes yet again Deshpande’s position as one of India’s most formidable writers of fiction.

15. Golden Quill 2009 Longlist –Fiction category Bandicoots In The Moonlight by Avijit Ghosh Avijit Ghosh graduated from St Xavier’s College, Ranchi and did a master’s in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Since 1991, he has been a full-time journalist. T’TA Professor by Manohar Shyam Joshi Manohar Shyam Joshi a prolific writer, tried his hand at virtually every form of writing: novels, advertising copy and television scripts, and had a long and distinguished career as a journalist. The Wind From The Hills by Sethu Sethu's work spans shadows in which legend, metaphor and mysticism share equal space. A dream-like condensation of space and time and the constant employment of non-realistic narrative strategies mark the style of this doyen of the Malayalam literary world. In this English translation, Prema Jayakumar spools out a fabric that changes one language to another lyrically and seamlessly

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