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New Delhi:
Boy wizard Harry Potter, youthful criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl
and vampire Edward from the Twilight series - the neo-adolescent
heroes of the West - have spurred the creativity of young Indian
authors and led to a stream of books set in a fantasy world,
eagerly read by their contemporaries.
Till the late 1990s, the young adult readership was traditionally
served by books imported from the West. In the the last decade,
the readership virtually exploded when J.K. Rowling launched the
Harry Potter series, Eoin Colfer created Artemis Fowl and
Stephanie Meyer began her Twilight series.
Young adult is a genre "which is now coming of age in India with
publishers establishing separate imprints for the category", said
Kanishka Gupta, who manages Writer's Side, a literary agency.
"This is because of the growing interest among teens to read books
they can easily relate," said Gupta, who recently sold 15-year-old
Mumbai-based writer Shreya Mathur's young adult book to Harper
Collins-India.
The book is about a girl who can "predict question papers
correctly on the basis of sample chapters".
Author Trisha Ray, an English literature student at Jadavpur
University, writes about a "foundation", a secret organisation
that claims to exist only to serve human civilisation with guns,
martial arts and blood battles in her book, "The Girls Behind the
Gunfire".
"I was inspired by the tough Hollywood girl as, when I was
younger, I aspired to be one. After doing karate for a few years,
I realised that slick moves in high heels and killer make-up were
never going to happen," the 19-year-old Ray told IANS.
"Learning to fight involves startlingly artistic bruises and a lot
of sweat! I think I tried to put that across in the book to the
best of my ability. The tough girl in this book is into fighting
because she likes it."
For Payal Dhar, 35, the author of "A Shadow in Eternity" and
"Satin, A Stitch in Time", "writing young adult fantasy is like
playing god".
"I suppose, when I started writing fantasy, what really hooked me
was that you got to break the rules and create whole new ones. I
love how it pushes you to reconsider the world around you, how
people relate to each other, traditions, stereotypes, social
order, technology and laws of physics," Dhar told IANS.
"Publishers and authors are waking up to the fact that this is a
segment which needs to be written about; talked to. There is a
demand in the market," Priya Kapoor, director of Roli Books, told
IANS.
"Our children's books by Paro Anand addresses almost everything
from hard-hitting social issues to the Kashmir turmoil, exposing
them to realities they had no idea about," Kapoor said, agreeing
"that the success of Harry Potter has helped Indian publishers
encourage the genre".
Anand, 51, is the author of 16 books for young adults and
children.
Roli Books said its major young adult titles this year
"represented diversity" with Ranjit Lal's "Black Limmericks",
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's "Shadowland", the third book in the
"Conch of the Brotherhood" trilogy, and Rakesh Satyal's "Blue
Boy".
Penguin India describes its new Penguin Young Adult imprint as "an
eclectic mix - a blend of the east and west".
"The big titles include 'The Return of Ravana' series (three
books) by David Hair, 'Skunk Girl' by Sheba Karim, 'Faces in the
Water' by Ranjit Lal and 'Figure it Out: The Ultimate Guide to
Teen Fitness' by Namita Jain," a spokesperson for the publisher
told IANS.
Publisher and chief editor of Harper Collins V.A. Karthika
observed that the increase in the number of Indian young adult
books was due to the sense among publishers "that there was a gap
in the market".
"The success of Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter has shown us the
demand. On an average, we do six books a year. The inaugural
package of our young adult series had four books. We are trying to
get young people to write for young people so that readers can
connect to the stories," Karthika told IANS.
Debutante Rajal Pitroda, 33, the author of "Starstruck", sums up
the genre thus: "It has to be a compelling story with characters
that young adult readers can relate as an experience".
(Madhusree
Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)
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