Can't get enough of books in India
| Jaipur, India
鈥� A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
Thousands of people packed beneath an enormous tent at the Jaipur Literary Festival in Rajasthan, northwestern India, in January. They came to see talk show superstar Oprah Winfrey, one of the featured guests at the festival. Among her many accomplishments is her book club, which drove book sales into the millions. But, with no Oprah equivalent in India, the young people in this country are spearheading their own book clubs.
Sumeet Shetty is an example. When he鈥檚 not buying books, he鈥檚 inviting authors to speak at his company鈥檚 book club in Bangalore. With more than 500 active members, it鈥檚 one of the biggest on the subcontinent. Though that number is only a drop in the bucket in a country of 1.2 billion, it reflects a growing trend.
Literary festivals like Jaipur, one of the largest in South Asia, are exposing this generation to a variety of new authors. And, as the income of the middle class continues to rise, so does their appetite for buying books.
鈥淢y generation has so much more access to literature than my mother鈥檚,鈥� says Surabhi Bhatnagar, who started a book club at her university in Rajasthan. Though she plans to work in information technology, she says it is the writings of English author Virginia Woolf and works like 鈥淚nto the Wild,鈥� by Jon Krakauer, that captivate her.
Though right now in India books sell mostly by word of mouth, perhaps it鈥檚 only a matter of time until this growing enthusiasm for literature blossoms into a world-renowned book club like Oprah鈥檚.
