Böcker av Siddharth Chowdhury

It is the book launch of Best in Show: The Peacock Book of Indo-Anglian Fiction and John Nair, managing editor, Peacock India, is throwing the grandest party of his life. The whole of literary India is in attendance. All the literary stars are here: the Seths, the Roys, the Chaudharis, among many, many others. And into this haloed gathering walks Nair's old friend, Ritwik Ray, the slightly off-kilter bard of Patna, with a new novel in hand: Godse Chowk. Mayhem ensues. Set in the goldfish bowl of the New Delhi publishing world, The Time of the Peacock provides an accurate yet compassionate reading of the Indian literary scene-both bhasha and metropolitan.

Go to any party, in any country, on any moonlit terrace of the world, the best dressed man is always the one from Patna. ' In these nine interlinked stories we meet the not so quintessential Patna man Hriday Thakur, Literature junkie, aspiring writer, inveterate lover of women and rain, Jishnu da, his acquaintance from Delhi University, who is now an 'importer of blondes', Samuel Crown, the fastidious proofreader who mentors Hriday and instils in him an irrevocable love for the art of 'book-making', the parade of women in Hriday's life: austere, doe eyed Charulata, love of his youth, the one who got away, Chitrangada, his wife, who works hard to be accepted in his world of books, art, politics and activism, the beautiful Anjali Singh Nalwa, ex-flame who is now a fiery, controversial novelist, Imogen Burns, the intrepid chronicler of graveyards, Sadaf Khan Abdali, who loves the smell of Listerine early in the morning and 'Sophia Loren', dream girl of many schoolboys, now a mother of two.