From the time I was a child, I have discovered the books I love in libraries and second-hand bookshops, and that is inevitably where the books I love find me.
My maternal grandparents’ house in Madikeri, in India, was full of books, all of which I read and re-read. After that, the Madikeri library, where the librarian, Lakshmi Aunty, induced in me a state of stupor by letting me borrow as many books as I wanted instead of the usual two. Later, in New Delhi, the defence officers’ club library, where my father regularly took me. Then, the sweet little library at my beloved school in Gwalior. Back to Delhi, and the second-hand bookshops and pavement booksellers of Connaught Place, where my friends Nandita and Kiran bought me my birthday books. And that lovely bookshop – The Bookworm – and the British Council library. Next, the public library at State College, Pennsylvania, followed by Manneys Booksellers and Crossword in Pune. Then, my fantasy-come-true libraries in the suburbs of Phoenix, and the independent bookshop, Changing Hands, where the sight of second-hand books nestling side by side with new ones never ceases to delight me.
Naturally, I discovered the following three writers in libraries:
Pat Barker. Her two magnificent books, The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, are from the point of view of Briseis, who, in Barker’s story, is no great love of Achilles, but his war prize, his slave. And Achilles? Briseis and the other slaves call him ‘the butcher’. What superb writing, what a searing, stunning perspective! I’m now waiting for Barker’s third, The Voyage Home.
Philip Pullman. I hadn’t cried while reading a book since my teenage years (oh, those Victorians!) but after I finished Pullman’s His Dark Materials, I was overcome by Lyra and Will’s incredible journey. My young daughter, even more overcome, wrote a heartfelt letter to Philip Pullman. He replied. She framed his letter and put it up in her room. Twenty years later, it is still there, one of her prized possessions. I am awaiting his third volume of The Book of Dust.
Robin Hobb. I have been waiting for her next book since 2017. Her sixteen linked books, set in three different, yet deeply connected, worlds, starting with the Farseer trilogy, are among the best I’ve read. What scope and depth of imagination, what unforgettable characters! So deeply do I feel her characters’ experiences – especially Fitz, the Fool, and Nighteyes – that even thinking of them stirs my soul.
Ah, talking of soul, I’m always, always waiting to read yet another version of that most complex and compelling epic – the unparalleled Mahabharata.
My favourite versions so far are The Mahabharata: A Modern Rendering by Ramesh Menon and Mrityunjaya, the Death Conqueror: The Story of Karna by Shivaji Sawant. The Mahabharata has long been part of India’s oral storytelling tradition, which is how as a child I first heard the tale – in the words of my mother, who, before I ever read it, was the first to make that soaring story sing.