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My Friend Sancho

My first book, My Friend Sancho, was published in May 2009, and went on to become the biggest selling debut novel released that year in India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and had earlier been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.


If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho


Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.


My posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

The Dalit Cartel

Check out this piece by Shikha Dalmia on the role that market forces play in perpetuating the caste system.…

Ban Nudity! Ban Nightlife!

Our right-wing lunatics are so funny sometimes that it’s hard to hate them. Balbir Punj has a bizarre (but…

City News

Having resumed blogging, it was natural for me to head over to the ToI site for the potential double…

The Ill-Effects of a Rave Party in Udupi

The Hindustan Times reports that two Karnataka ministers were caught watching pornographic videos “when the house was in session.”…

I’m All In: Confessions of a Poker Obsessive

This personal essay by me appears in the winter edition of Forbes Life India. I feel the ground sway…

14 November, 2007

The Hyper-Masculine Norman Mailer

Just because a man’s dead is no reason to think well of him. Joan Smith writes in the Guardian:

Mailer did not actually kill any of his wives (unlike the French philosopher Louis Althusser, who strangled his), but he stabbed his second wife twice in the neck and his fourth accused him of beating her. His fascination with hyper-masculinity drew him to boxing; it also resulted in tragedy when Mailer was instrumental in securing the release of a convicted killer, Jack Abbott, who then stabbed a waiter to death.

Yes, the Jack Abbott matter was quite disgraceful, a classic case of self delusion (on Mailer’s part). Did a similar self-delusion perhaps afflict Mailer’s third wife? Famous writers can get away with anything, it would seem…

Posted by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment

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