Karnataka   

Richard Crasta’s books released

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

FIRST COPIES: Michael F. Saldanha, retired Judge, Karnataka High Court, releasing the books The Killing of An Author and The Revised Kama Sutra, by Richard Crasta (left) in Bangalore on Wednesday.

BANGALORE: “Unusual and original” and “spices like an Indian curry” is how the former judge Michael F. Saldanha described Richard Crasta’s autobiographical thriller The Killing of an Author and The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel of Colonialism and Desire (previously published by Penguin Viking).

The two books were released at Oxford Bookstore here on Wednesday. They are jointly published by Oxford and Invisible Man Publishers and Co.

Mr. Saldanha commented on the style and content of Mr. Crasta’s works as “delightful”. Mr. Crasta recalled that at the last launch of The Killing of an Author in New Delhi, Police Commissioner Maxwell Pereira who was present at the launch was asked to investigate the killings and now hoped that the readers would be vigorous to do the same. Raising a concern of Appendix I of the book, the author said that prescription drugs had killed more people than illegal drugs in the U.S.. The Killing of An Author was about the “uncompromising desire for justice”.

He observed that eight years into his writing career, he discovered two sets of writers in the U.S — the whites and the browns. He said: “For an Indian writing in English, it becomes a matter of great concern if you are Christian, Muslim or Hindu. To be an Indian Christian writer is seen as exotic.”

Mr. Crasta stressed on the importance of professionalism in researching for a book. “I want my reader to not stop reading at Pg. 148 but read from the first to the last.” He said that a writer should write for himself first, give himself to the book and not be a “slave writer” and fall prey to marketing. He asserted that he was not the Indian ethnic writer writing about snakes, and Maharanis but called himself a non-establishment.

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