speaker

S. Anand (Navayana, India)

S. Anand is a writer, and publisher of Navayana, an independent imprint he cofounded in 2003. Navayana focuses on issues of caste and inequality. He has published a range of authors including B.R. Ambedkar, Arundhati Roy, Slavoj Zizek, Namdeo Dhasal and Jeremy Seabrook. In 2011, he curated and co-wrote Bhimayana, a graphic biography of India’s leading civil rights activist B.R. Ambedkar, which has been published in ten languages. Prior to turning to full-time publishing in 2007, he was a print journalist for ten years working for Outlook, The Hindu, Indian Express and Tehelka.

Statements

The fiction of facts

  • In instances where the powerful are writing about the powerless, there’s a range of dynamics at work. In most cases those written about have no means of contesting their representation, the manipulation of their lives by a ‘gifted’ writer who flits into their lives and flits out.
  • Markets and other forces determine the form and shape of writing. In the last ten to fifteen years, non-fiction has done better in terms of sales, partly because it wears the clothes of fiction.
  • In the post-Iraq War and post-9/11 world, readers are asking for more and more fake drama. Hence non-fiction that parades as fiction is the new formula, and it covers a wide range.