Vikram Chandra

Early on in "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" (1995), Vikram Chandra's first novel, an experienced narrator offers some advice to a beginner: "Straightforwardness is the curse of your age, Sanjay. Be wily, be twisty, be elaborate. Forsake grim shortness and hustle. Let us luxuriate in your curlicues. Besides, you need a frame story for its peace and quiet. . . . Thus the story is perfect in itself, complete and whole."

AS a boy growing up in India, Vikram Chandra went to a Catholic school where teachers showed English-language movies every week to help students learn the language. Once, Chandra recalled, his class watched a spaghetti western where the hero sat down to Thanksgiving dinner and carved up a huge turkey. "We had never seen such a bird; all we knew from our experience were chickens," he said. "We all decided that the bird had to be a vulture, and we thought: 'How weird.

AS a boy growing up in India, Vikram Chandra went to a Catholic school where teachers showed English-language movies every week to help students learn the language. Once, Chandra recalled, his class watched a spaghetti western where the hero sat down to Thanksgiving dinner and carved up a huge turkey. "We had never seen such a bird; all we knew from our experience were chickens," he said. "We all decided that the bird had to be a vulture, and we thought: 'How weird.

WHAT do we make of Vikram Chandra and his 916-page detective novel "Sacred Games"? Published this past August in India, the U.K. and nine other countries and newly released in the United States, it seems utterly antithetical to our Age of Brevity.

An Indian collegian, Abhay, freshly back home from the United States, shoots a thieving monkey on his parents' roof. The shock brings back the wounded animal's human consciousness; he had, in a past life, been a 19th-Century Indian poet, Sanjay. As Yama, the God of Death, approaches to claim the dying creature, the monkey yearns to tell his story. With the intervention of the powerful Hindu deity, Hanuman, a deal is struck.

An untitled, 1,225-page epic set in India and billed as a combination of "The Godfather" and a Victorian Gothic novel will be released next year by HarperCollins after a bidding war involving six publishers. A source close to the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the deal was worth $1 million. Author Vikram Chandra's previous books include "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" and "Love and Longing in Bombay."

WHAT do we make of Vikram Chandra and his 916-page detective novel "Sacred Games"? Published this past August in India, the U.K. and nine other countries and newly released in the United States, it seems utterly antithetical to our Age of Brevity.

Director AND producer Bart DeLorenzo has been busy in the Southland theater scene nonstop since he arrived from Massachusetts in the early '90s. He is the founding artistic director of the Evidence Room, where he helmed productions of "The Cherry Orchard," "Don Carlos," "Hard Times" and "Mayhem." He recently took on Joan Rivers in "A Work in Progress by a Life in Progress," and is currently directing "Shipwrecked!" at the Geffen.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Joyce Carol Oates led the field of National Book Critics Circle finalists announced Saturday, with nominations in both fiction and autobiography categories. Oates was nominated in fiction for "The Gravedigger's Daughter," along with Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which was passed over for a National Book Award nomination last fall.

It's hard not to judge Melanie Abrams' recently published debut novel by its cover. Against a background of sensually rumpled burgundy satin sheets is a head of sensually rumpled blond curls, looking downward, eyes in shadow, betraying no expression. Two pale arms stretch upward, spotlighted so they're nearly white, fists clenched, wrists tied with a dark green sash. To the left, the title swoons in matte gold script: "Playing." Abrams, 35, loves the cover. At her reading at Book Soup earlier this month, she flashed the book suggestively, like a trench-coated peddler of dirty magazines, and it won a titter from the crowd.

An untitled, 1,225-page epic set in India and billed as a combination of "The Godfather" and a Victorian Gothic novel will be released next year by HarperCollins after a bidding war involving six publishers. A source close to the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the deal was worth $1 million. Author Vikram Chandra's previous books include "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" and "Love and Longing in Bombay."

Early on in "Red Earth and Pouring Rain" (1995), Vikram Chandra's first novel, an experienced narrator offers some advice to a beginner: "Straightforwardness is the curse of your age, Sanjay. Be wily, be twisty, be elaborate. Forsake grim shortness and hustle. Let us luxuriate in your curlicues. Besides, you need a frame story for its peace and quiet. . . . Thus the story is perfect in itself, complete and whole."

An Indian collegian, Abhay, freshly back home from the United States, shoots a thieving monkey on his parents' roof. The shock brings back the wounded animal's human consciousness; he had, in a past life, been a 19th-Century Indian poet, Sanjay. As Yama, the God of Death, approaches to claim the dying creature, the monkey yearns to tell his story. With the intervention of the powerful Hindu deity, Hanuman, a deal is struck.

IN AN AGE when we are constantly told that the printed word is dying, J.K. Rowling defied the received wisdom. I'm not the first critic to compare the midnight frenzies that have greeted every Harry Potter book since the fourth to the crowds waiting on the New York docks for the ships carrying the next installment of Charles Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop," frantically calling out to the sailors to ask if Little Nell had died.

"India is my kid sister," says Salman Rushdie, who was born on June 19, 1947, in Bombay, explaining that his birthday happens to fall eight weeks before the date of Indian independence at midnight, Aug. 14, 1947. This is vintage Rushdie, a man who has a gift for placing himself in the whirling vortex of history. And how did he celebrate the 50th anniversary? A David Byrne concert at Roseland. "Rock 'n' roll was a kid when I was a kid," he chortles, "now we're both middle-aged!"