Guernica has Kamila Shamsie in conversation with Pankaj Mishra, and it's a pretty interesting little Q & A, discussing how Sandalwood Death-author Mo Yan's Nobel win was handled by literary commentators -- with Mishra suggesting: "we need a more complex understanding of writers working under authoritarian or repressive regimes".
Also of interest: Mishra's observation:
Also of interest: Mishra's observation:
I think that Indian writing in English is a really peculiar beast. I can't think of any literature -- perhaps Russian literature in the nineteenth century comes close -- so exclusively produced by and closely identified with a tiny but powerful ruling elite, the upper-caste, Anglophone upper middle class, and dependent for so long on book buyers and readers elsewhere. This has made for a narrow range of writing and visionA fairly obvious observation, but one that's much too rarely pointed out. (And, yes, he's also right to point out that: "things have started to change".)