bookish anticipation

I have been restlessly reading all this excited talk about upcoming books--Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown is due out any day now (except in Brazil, where it was published last month) and Zadie Smith's On Beauty and Vikram Seth's Two Lives In fact, Rushdie and Smith's books (as well as a forthcoming J.M. Coetzee novel) have been nominated to the Booker longlist before having been released to us general riffraff.

For some of the more interesting perspectives, see this post from Sepia Mutiny about Rushdie and Smith (with a long and interesting comment discussion, albeit one understandably derailed by a rapturous commentary on Zadie's cheekbones); thariel's musings on Rushdie vs. Seth; and Amitava Kumar's much-discussed (and in my opinion, somewhat mistaken) critique of Rushdie. I, for one, am looking forwards to all three. But as much as I love Rushdie and Smith at their kaleidoscopic, firecracker best, their work is unpredictably uneven, and they're also fairly prolific--there's a new offering every few years. Seth's writing, though, is always marvelous, and--as thariel observes--each time in a stunningly different way. And since it takes him ages to write each book, he is a much rarer treat. I've never read a thing of his that I didn't like (and I'm still hunting down a copy of From Heaven's Lake, which dear S. claims is one of the best books he's written). A Suitable Boy kept me more-than-suitable company on a winter research trip to Turkey, filling my head with the complex social quilt of post-independence India during a long night train ride through frozen Anatolia, and even prompting me to forsake the pleasures of wandering around Istanbul in order to stay curled up in a cafe with the book (whose size prompted laughter from the waiters).

But my most treasured of Seth's books is a battered, musty paperback copy of An Equal Music, stamped on the side in blue ink: "Mr. Charles' Licensed Guest House, 141 Auba Street, Myole Quarter, Hsipaw." Hsipaw is a small hill town in the Shan state of northeastern Burma. I'd already run through most of the English books I'd brought, and with nearly three weeks to go in Burma. My traveling companion and former employer (the author of this excellent study of the Burmese military regime) had promised me her copy of Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner (also recommended), but was still several chapters away from the end. The discovery of the decrepit copy of Seth's novel, in a basket at the guest house, was a godsend. I was eager to take it away with me, but none of the books I had were suitable trades, being mostly about the Middle East and unlikely to spark the interest of whatever travellers wandered through Hsipaw next. So I went out and combed the town's tiny multilingual bookstall for a stand-in, purchased a shiny new copy of Orwell's Burmese Days and convinced "Mr. Charles" to give me An Equal Music in exchange. I treasured it throughout the journey, slowly rereading favorite bits during our dusty daytime car rides, and dreaming of violins and the Serpentine at night. I carried the shabby paperback home and have kept it ever since, though with a slight, guilty worry--as a friend teased,--"But what if it was the only copy of the book in Burma, and you took it away?"

I'll have to go back one of these years, and leave another in its stead.