Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Debut novel sells like hot cakes, thanks to controversy

Susan Muthalaly

It is top of the Landmark sales chart, says store manager

CHENNAI: This is about How Kaavya Viswanathan Got Caught, Got Hot and Sold More Books than Ever.

The 19-year-old's debut novel `How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life' has the allure of Forbidden Fruit. Especially since the book was supposed to have been recalled by Penguin India, the distributor for Little, Brown and Company, the publishers of Viswanathan's chick-lit novel that's immersed in a plagiarism controversy.

"Get it fast, it's supposed to be off the market," said one young man to his girlfriend, and she made a grab for it from Landmark's prominent display counter. Dinshaw Batliwala, the store manager of Spencer Plaza's Landmark, says when the book first came out, they were selling three-four copies a day. Now, it is top of the Landmark sales chart, leaving David Mitchell's new offering `Black Swan Green' and `Shantaram' by Gregory David Roberts puttering behind. The Spencer outlet alone sold 19 copies on Sunday.

Mr. Batliwala says, "We have not heard from Penguin, so we are still selling the book, which is doing extremely well... "

Ridhi, a class 12 student, who has just picked up the book, says, "After the reviews, I wanted to read it. After the controversy, I wanted to read it all the more." Her father, standing nearby, says it's disheartening - You hear of a South Indian girl making it big and then she falls from grace. Even before the controversy, the book was enjoying worldwide media attention, and the movie rights were sold to DreamWorks.

Little, Brown said in a statement on Thursday that it had asked retailers and wholesale outlets to stop selling the book and return unsold copies.

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