August Selection 2006
August Selection, 2006
The Book Club meets once a month (usually the second Tuesday of the month) in Castlebar Library at 8.00pm. Check events page for next meeting.
Book for August Meeting, 2006
Q & A
Vikas Swarup's spectacular debut novel opens in a jail cell in Mumbai, India, where Ram Mohammad Thomas is being held after correctly answering all twelve questions on India's biggest quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion? It is hard to believe that a poor orphan who has never read a newspaper or gone to school could win such a contest. But through a series of exhilarating tales Ram explains to his lawyer how episodes in his life gave him the answer to each question.
Ram takes us on an amazing review of his own history — from the day he was found as a baby in the clothes donation box of a Delhi church to his employment by a faded Bollywood star to his adventure with a security-crazed Australian army colonel to his career as an overly creative tour guide at the Taj Mahal.
Swarup's Q & A is a beguiling blend of high comedy, drama, and romance that reveals how we know what we know — not just about trivia, but about life itself. Cutting across humanity in all its squalor and glory, Vikas Swarup presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the struggle between good and evil — and what happens when one boy has no other choice in life but to survive
From the Publisher
"Q & A" by Vikas Swarup is one of the most original books I've read in ages. An Indian waiter with no formal education is arrested after winning the top prize on the quiz show, "Who Wants to be a Billionaire" because the owners of the show are sure he cheated. In each chapter, the waiter tells his lawyer how an incident in his life helped him know the answer to the question. The stories are good to terrific and there are several twists and a surprise ending (or two).
philipmorgolin.com
Q & A session with Vikas Swarup (channelnewsasia.com)
Q: Why the name Ram Mohammad Thomas?
A : I wanted him to represent the richness and diversity of India, not just as a cliche. And if you read the book, you'll see the name means a lot in the book. Ram Mohammad Thomas is not just a name. He actually uses the three elements - the Hindu religion, the Christian religion and the Muslim religion when he interacts with various characters. So for his Muslim friend Salim, he becomes Mohammad, for the Australian diplomat he becomes Thomas and for the Indian actress who is wary of keeping a Muslim servant he becomes Ram. So he does utilise his name to meet various circumstances.
Q : What was the inspiration for your plot?
A : I had come across a news report some time back that slum children had begun using a mobile internet facility. That is what set me thinking because normally you associate the internet with a certain level of sophistication. You would expect people who are well educated, who read newspapers who would use the internet and here you had children from a slum who had never gone to school, had probably never read the newspapers, who were logging on to the worldwide web. And that set me thinking that perhaps there is some innate ability in all us, that given the right opportunity can surface.At the same time I wanted to tap into this global phenomena called 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. This is really the first televised globally syndicated quiz show. So the idea was let's juxtapose the quiz show with a rather untypical contestant and that's why you had Q & A.
Q : You are a first time novelist, did you imagine the book would be this big?
A : No, never. In fact when I wrote it, I wrote it primarily as an Indian book for an Indian audience. I had no idea it would be picked up publishers everywhere and would emerge as a global novel.
Q : Critics have called your book 'sweet, sorrowful and compelling'. In fact, your writing style has even been compared to the bestselling author Mark Haddon. That sounds like a dream come true for any author. How do you feel about all the positive reviews?
A : I feel very, very gratified. I wrote this book primarily for myself. The book is about an Indian milieu, its set in India. There is no attempt to exoticise places, it deals with the sordidness with India in a certain sense, the underbelly of urban India. In fact, there is no attempt to pander to Western audiences, which is often a charge levelled against Indian authors who have an eye on the Western market.
So the fact that this has been accepted so willingly, and before the English publication, that is the best thing. Normally, a book becomes big in India and then its picked up by the rest of the world and then people say its all because of the hype. And here I am an unknown author, I haven't been published in India, yet my book has been picked up by publishers from Brazil to Barcelona, that means something.
So I am very very gratified. I suppose the reason for that is that maybe at the core there is something universal about the book - its about the underdog winning and that's something that appeals to people in all cultures and communities.
Some useful book club links (external links: open in new window)
- Reader's Area of this site
- Reader's Review site with active discussion board
- Book Group Links: A selection of sites compiled by the Salt Lake City Library.
- Great Books Foundation: The grandfather of them all
- Reading Group Choices Online: Over 550 guides from publishers. 150 can be printed from the site
- Reading Group Guides: A very useful selection of reading group guides from Random House Publishers
- Writer's Resource site for writers of all abilities