The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : The long and short of young author's musings

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Monday, Dec 18, 2006
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

The long and short of young author's musings

Staff Reporter

Y.V. Reddy RBI Governor and author Sriram in Hyderabad.

HYDERABAD: An author who has just got out of his tumultuous twenties has penned his first novel and then manages to keep autobiographic elements to the bare minimum in the book is not an everyday occurrence in literary circles, at least those of the city.

Even C. Sriram acknowledges that most debut novels suffer from the autobiography syndrome, and does not rule out traces of himself in his exploration of the recesses of a youngster's mind in his novel `The Long Reverie of Partha Sarma' (Penguin, Rs.250).

"But honestly, Partha is not me," he told the audience that had been called together by Penguin Books India and Akshara to celebrate publication of Sriram's debut novel. The Long Reverie, Sriram said, had evolved after the `mid-twenties' struck him as an interesting phase in a person's life.

"A post-university phase in which various naive notions fall by the wayside and youthful confidence and optimism is replaced by a sullen acceptance of one's lowly place in the food chain."

The event, which had Reserve Bank of India Governor Y.V. Reddy as chief guest, saw the author himself reading out passages from his work. Sriram is already working on his second novel, which will be based in India and San Francisco. "No, it will not be like `The Inscrutable Americans'," he said.

Sriram, a Visakhapatnam-born postgraduate in mass communication from University of Hyderabad, is also researching his great grandfather's experiences at Berkeley in the US.

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