Word: davidar
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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After two decades of sifting through manuscripts?some brilliant, many mediocre and the majority awful?David Davidar, editor and publisher of Penguin India, knows something about what makes a good read. So when it came time to write his first book, The House of Blue Mangoes?a novel that he tinkered with for nearly ten years?he went back to basics, offering up a straightforward but gripping narrative, an epic saga that has had publishers worldwide scrambling to buy it. Released in India last month and slated for the U.S. in March, the novel is already being called the "book...
...half-century from 1899 to 1947. Against the backdrop of the British Raj, two world wars and the struggle for independence, it chronicles three generations of a Tamil family?the Dorais?and through them depicts the caste tensions that simmer just below the surface in the Indian countryside. Davidar is at his best when he weaves the family's struggles with vibrant images of rural life...
...notion that the book is partially autobiographical, a suggestion fostered by his painstaking research and meticulous detail. But he does admit to an idyllic childhood in the south on his father's tea estate which gave him a love of his native soil. Even though the scope of Davidar's saga compares to Seth's novel, its capable prose lacks the magical turns of phrase found in A Suitable Boy. Davidar's is a deliberate, enduring tale and one that proves years of plowing through a slush pile?learning how not to write?can produce a master storyteller...