At The New York Times' India Ink weblog Sonal Shah has A Conversation With: Literary Critic and Novelist Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, reporting that: "India's literary establishment is abuzz about the recently published novel The Mirror of Beauty".
The novel does sound pretty impressive -- but (even despite the praise from Orhan Pamuk) perhaps Shah is a bit premature in asking: "What's it been like to step into the global literary spotlight ?"
American -- and British -- readers are perhaps correctly considered to be at the periphery of everything 'global literary'; still, one would hope that significant books that might belong in that spotlight are at least vaguely readily available there; alas, the Penguin India edition -- the only English-language one, it seems; see their publicity page -- is, even at the Amazons, only: "Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 months" (try to get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk; your best -- and cheapest -- bet is still getting it from Flipkart in India).
The novel does sound pretty impressive -- but (even despite the praise from Orhan Pamuk) perhaps Shah is a bit premature in asking: "What's it been like to step into the global literary spotlight ?"
American -- and British -- readers are perhaps correctly considered to be at the periphery of everything 'global literary'; still, one would hope that significant books that might belong in that spotlight are at least vaguely readily available there; alas, the Penguin India edition -- the only English-language one, it seems; see their publicity page -- is, even at the Amazons, only: "Usually dispatched within 1 to 3 months" (try to get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk; your best -- and cheapest -- bet is still getting it from Flipkart in India).