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Literary Review
Stop that book!
BOTH Granta 77 and High Exposure are either published or distributed by Penguin. Through a series of mergers, and through the books they distribute, Penguin has become — in the small scale of India's English publishing — a huge publishing conglomerate with a list that ranges from the banal to the extraordinary.
On the good side in the near future, there are things like Rohinton Mistry's new novel Family Matters (Faber, £5.50), out this month; K. R. Narayanan's The Making of Modern India (Viking, Rs. 295) adds another head of state to Penguin India's home-grown list. They have brought in Puffin Books for children and are republishing all of Ian Fleming's original James Bond titles (each at £3.99). They distribute for Bloomsbury, Faber, TimeWarner and various others.
With such treasures, it is baffling why they unremittingly, and copiously churn out books that urge you on to the Improve-Yourself treadmill. The thought that the world's forests are being vomited out as Another Bad Day at the Office? Or Lunchtime Enlightenment makes you want to hand them a copy of "How to Publish, What to Publish" (unpublished mss). But it is the market that rules and as long as people think they will get stronger, calmer, better, if only they try, publishers will go on felling trees.
ANURADHA ROY
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