About the book:Title: If I Could Tell You
Author: Soumya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Tranquebar, India
Pages: 200
In If I Could Tell You, the new novel by the Indian writer, Soumya Bhattacharya, an unnamed narrator writes a series of letters to his daughter, explaining how his life has gone wrong. The letters, spanning the narrator’s life in India and England, from the 1970s till the stock market crash of 2008 and having as their unwavering focus his daughter and the relationship between them, speak of mislaid dreams and trust betrayed.
In prose of extraordinary beauty and power, Soumya Bhattacharya crafts a story of longing, love and loss. It is a story about how luck and chance and a twist in events can irrevocably alter our lives, a story of how love can lead to catastrophe, and, ultimately, a story about the new India, and how its economy can make, and then break a man who always wanted only to be no more — and no less — than a writer.
Haunting and tender, this is a remarkable novel from one of the most distinctive voices of his generation.
About the author:
Soumya Bhattacharya's memoir, You Must Like Cricket?, was published to international acclaim in 2006. He has also published a (sort of) sequel, All That You Can't Leave Behind. His writing has appeared in the New York Times in the US; the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Australia; the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the New Statesman in the UK. He is the Editor of Hindustan Times, Mumbai.
A couple of extracts from If I Could Tell You:
http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/If-I-Could-Tell-You
http://www.livemint.com/2010/01/01221024/The-story-of-a-father8217s.html
An interview:
http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Interview-Soumya-Bhattacharya
And a couple of profiles of the author and the novel:
http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/books/article81225.ece
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hearttoheart/567990/0
