UK NRI, Rana Dasgupta author sparkles in debut novel

NEW DELHI, January 31 2005
IANS

Debutant Indo-British author Rana Dasgupta says his book "Tokyo Cancelled" delves into the age-old art of verbal story-telling, increasingly lost in a modern world where most people are 'listeners' but rarely able to tell their own tales.

"Today there is very little contact between the listeners and the tellers," Dasgupta, whose first book "Tokyo Cancelled" has just been released, told IANS.

"There is a sense of disenfranchisement among the people who can only buy books or CDs but never have the opportunity to create stories," said the 33-year-old author whose book has been published by Harper Collins.

The book tells the tale of 13 passengers who are stranded at an airport and start to tell each other stories to pass the night.

The stories are based in the major cities of the world - New Delhi, New York, Istanbul, London, Paris and Buenos Aires - and talks of loves and peeves, dares and dreams of people.

Dasgupta, who was born in Britain and grew up in Cambridge, has lived in France, Malaysia and the US. He moved to Delhi in 2001 and worked briefly to set up a business wire.

For the last year or so, he basically writes fulltime.

Dasgupta said he does not include himself in the 'Indian writing in English' genre because the elements used to describe the group do not exist in his writing.

"I think there were things like independence and the partition - very powerful events which left a mark on the writings of (Salman) Rushdie or Arundhati Roy," said Dasgupta.

"But with writers like me, we are trying to translate more contemporary events. What's happening right at the moment around us is more important in my writing."

Filled with nuances inspired by old myths and fables, Dasgupta said his book was "about importing a kind of fairytale language".

His next book is about the visions of an old man, which is recorded by a girl on a typewriter everyday.

"It is a much more real story," said Dasgupta. "Through the visions, which come to him from all parts of the world and through which a story forms.

"He is like a lost prophet."

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