What is Suprose?

Welcome to Suprose.

Why Su-prose? "Su" in Sanskrit is a prefix for "good". This is a place where we will discuss and analyze prose (with a South Asian Connection) - that which is good, awesome, excellent, and maybe rant about prose that could be better.

Whether you love prose, are a prose expert, or want to learn more about prose, or to put it simply want to have anything to do with prose, this blog is for you.

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Indian Themed Books to consider reading to your little one –

For children ages 4 through 12

1. Aani and the Tree Huggers, Jeannine Atkins (Author), Venantius J. Pinto (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Lee & Low Books
2. Anklet for a Princess: A Cinderella Story from India, Meredith Babeaux Brucker (Author), Lila Mehta (Author) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Shen's Books
3. Baya, Baya, Lulla-by-a, Megan McDonald (Author), Vera Rosenberry (Illustrator)
Reading level: Baby-Preschool Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books
4. Bringing Asha Home, Uma Krishnaswami (Author), Jamel Akib (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Lee & Low Books
5. Chachaji's Cup, Uma Krishnaswami (Author), Soumya Sitaraman (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Children's Book Press
6. Elephant Dance: Memories of India, Theresa Heine (Author), Sheila Moxley (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Barefoot Books
7. Elephant Prince: The Story of Ganesh, Amy Novesky (Author), Belgin K. Wedman (Author) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Mandala Publishing
8. Finders Keepers? Robert A. Arnett (Author), Smita Turakhia (Author)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Atman Press
9. Going to School in India Lisa Heydlauff (Author), Nitin Upadyhe
Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
10. Gopal the Infallible, Sita Gilbakian (Author), Padmavathi Devi Dasi (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Mandala Publishing
11. Holi, Uma Krishnaswami (Author) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Children's Press
12. I Is for India (World Alphabets), Prodeepta Das (Author) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Frances Lincoln
13. In Search of The Thunder Dragon, Sophie and Romio Shrestha Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Mandala Publishing
14. Indian Tales: A Barefoot Collection Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Barefoot Books
15. Lighting a Lamp: A Diwali Story, Jonny Zucker (Author), Jan Barger Cohen (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publishers
16. Lights For Gita, Rachna Gilmore (Author), Alice Priestley (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
17. Lily's Garden of India, Jeremy Smith (Author), Rob Hefferan (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Gingham Dog Press
18. Little Krishna, Harish Jothari Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Bear Cub Books
19. Mama’s Saris, Pooja Makhijani Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
20. Miraculous Gopal, Sita Gilbakian (Author), Padmavathi Devi Dasi (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Mandala Publishing
21. Monsoon, Uma Krishnaswami Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
22. My Mother's Sari, Sandhya Rao (Author), Nina Sabnani (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: North South
23. Naina’s Adventure, Enakshi Choudhuri (Author), Jacob Nicholas (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Orbolo Books
24. Naming Maya, Uma Krishnaswami Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
25. Nine Animals and the Well, James Rumford (Author)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
26. One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale, Demi (Author), Demi (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Scholastic Press
27. Prita Goes to India, Prodeepta Das (Author)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Frances Lincoln
28. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator), Rudyard Kipling (Author)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: HarperCollins
29. Snake Charmer (Hardcover), Ann Whitehead Nagda (Author) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
30. The Boy and the Tigers (Little Golden Book), Helen Bannerman (Author), Valeria Petrone (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Golden Books
31. The Brave Little Parrot, Rafe Martin (Author) Jataka Tale
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Putnam Juvenile; Library Binding edition
32. The Butter Thief, Chris Murray (Author), Kim Waters Murray (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Mandala Publishing
33. The Closet Ghosts, by Uma Krishnaswami (Author), Shiraaz Bhabha (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Children's Book Press; Library Binding edition (December 27, 2005)
34. The Gift of Gopal, Sita Gilbakian (Author), Padmavathi Devi Dasi (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Mandala Publishing
35. The Happiest Tree: A Yoga Story, Uma Krishnaswami (Author), Ruth Jeyaveeran (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Lee & Low Books
36. The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling (Author), Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: HarperCollins; Gift edition (September 27, 1995)
37. The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow, Sanjay Patel (Author)
Reading level: Ages 4-11 Publisher: Plume
38. The Little Brown Jay: A Tale from India, Elizabeth Claire (Author), Miriam Katin (Illustrator) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Mondo Publishing; Expanded edition
39. The Monkey and the Crocodile: A Jataka Tale from India, Paul Galdone (Author) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Clarion Books (September 21, 1987)
40. The Poombah of Badoombah, Dee Lillegard (Author), Kevin Hawkes (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Putnam Juvenile
41. The Ramayana for Children, Bulbul Sharma (Author) Publisher: Penguin Global Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Penguin Global
42. The Road to Mumbai, Ruth Jayaveeran Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
43. The Story of Divaali, Jatinder Verma (Author), Valmiki (Author), Nilesh Mistry (Illustrator)
Reading level: Ages 4-8 Publisher: Barefoot Books (September 1, 2002)
44. The Story of Little Babaji, Helen Bannerman (Author), Fred Marcellino (Illustrator)
Reading level: Baby-Preschool Publisher: Harper Trophy
45. Younguncle Comes to Town, Vandana Singh Reading level: Ages 9-12 Publisher: Viking Juvenile

Friday, July 31, 2009

Aravind Adiga: 'How English literature shaped me'

Growing up in a conservative Indian town in the 1980s, Aravind Adiga devoured literature, most of it English, he says in an essay in The Independent. 

"Mangalore, the coastal Indian town where I lived until I was almost 16, is now a booming city of malls and call-centres. But, in the 1980s, it was a provincial town in a socialist country. Books were expensive in those days, and few of us could actually buy them. The thing to do was to join a circulating library that would lend them out at a nominal rate (novels, two rupees a fortnight; comics, 50 paise).
Like most of my friends in school, I was a member of multiple circulating libraries; and all of us, to begin with, borrowed and read the same things. Up to the age of 10, you borrowed comics (mainly illustrated versions of the great Indian epics); later came your first novels, a boys' detective series called "The Hardy Boys". Girls read an equivalent series called "Nancy Drew".
When you grew out of the Hardy Boys, you started on the action novelist Alistair MacLean, whose fast-paced novels such as The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare were given glamour by their big-budget Hollywood adaptations. My problems started when Alistair MacLean bored me. The owner of my favorite lending library suggested that I try a "woman's writer" instead: Agatha Christie. She was fascinating for a while, introducing me to the revolutionary idea that a killer could narrate a novel (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) before she bored me too."
Read the full piece here.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Golden age of Indian writing: How a new generation of writers is making waves in South Asia

From The Independent -- 
There was a time, not so long ago, when a visit to a Delhi bookshop to browse its section of Indian literature would be a somewhat depressing experience. There would a handful of stellar stand-out names, of course; Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and one or two others. But the collection would be a half-hearted affair, seemingly there more out of duty than joy, and usually it would be hidden away at the back of the shop.
"Now, that has all completely changed," laughs V K Karthika, publisher and chief editor of HarperCollins India. "Now those books are at the front of the shop. What's more, they're actually the books you want to read, rather than the books you read because you feel you should."
For more than a decade, a period bookended by Arundhati Roy's Booker prize success in 1997 with The God of Small Things and Aravind Adiga's similar achievement last year, India has been enjoying an English language literary boom. A newly buoyant middle-class, better travelled, more curious and with more disposable income, has been devouring books like never before. Almost every year now it appears that there is a new trend – pulp fiction one year, chick-lit "sari fiction" the next – as Indian publishers find new ways to tap into the market and reach out to more readers.
But more lately, this growth is spilling out across the hot and angry borders of the sub-continent. New writers from Bangladesh are finding appreciative international audiences, while the frisson surrounding the new literary scene in Pakistan that has produced a handful of exiting new authors, matches the buzz that India first experienced a decade ago.
In India, the growth seems more obviously apparent in the sheer variety of genres that now fill the shelves. There is more fiction, non-fiction and travel writing than ever before; between them, the major publishers now annually produce around 600 new titles each year. But within these broad headings there is huge diversity that would not have been imaginable a few years ago. Today's India is producing crime novels, comic-strip books, and memoirs such as Maximum City, Suketu Mehta's seminal account of Mumbai. There are books set around the campus's of the country's famed technology institutes, and there are books about young Indian women smoking, drinking and falling in love with hapless, inappropriate men.
Read the full article here.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Salman Rushdie: The Fatwa 20 Years Later on Times Talks

People seem to expect Salman Rushdie to write about his experiences after a fatwa was imposed on him in 1989. He explains why he has not yet done it: At the moment it feels like reopening a room that I locked up for very good reason.

For more information about TimesTalks events visithttp://nytimes.com/TimesTalks