PVLF 2025

Is Novel Culture Vanishing from India?

on Sep 12, 2022

When Amish Tripathi's, the Immortal of Meluha, the first part of the Shiva trilogy, rose to great fame in 2010 after being rejected by 40 publishers, he made two bold observations. The Indian publishing world was about to undergo a major transformation through translation and cultural pride. "Enough stories to keep you busy for decades to come!" Tripathi claimed at the time.

In 2022, India loves good translation work. However, sales of that fiction have been somewhat formidable.

Step inside the bookstore and you would find cult best-selling authors like Devdut Patnaik Amitav Ghosh, Amish Tripathi, and Ashwin Sangi. The list is not long.

However, it's the non-fiction bookshelf that overflows, vibrates, and comes to life. Readers and editors have new energy and enthusiasm for facts, data, stories, theories, and experiences. The days of fiction under the Indian sun may have just ended.

"Literature is in a state of desolation," says Kanishka Gupta of Writer's Side, representing Daisy Rockwell, translator of Geetanjali Shree's Sand Grave. "Publishers are truncating it, and there are few machines to support its growth."