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My Friend Sancho

My first novel, My Friend Sancho, is now on the stands across India. It is a contemporary love story set in Mumbai, and was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. To learn more about the book, click here.


To buy it online from the US, click here.


I am currently on a book tour to promote the book. Please check out our schedule of city launches. India Uncut readers are invited to all of them, no pass required, so do drop in and say hello.


If you're interested, do join the Facebook group for My Friend Sancho


Click here for more about my publisher, Hachette India.


And ah, my posts on India Uncut about My Friend Sancho can be found here.


Bastiat Prize 2007 Winner

Recent entries

Another Independence Day

July 2, 2009—mark this day. It’s a big day in the history of independent India because today was the…

Savita Bhabhi Fights Censorship

A dull government office. A pot-bellied bureaucrat in a safari suit sits behind a table on which many dusty…

‘My Mother’s Fault’

My friend Salil Tripathi was in Bombay this week to promote his marvellous new book, “Offence: The Hindu Case.”…

Spelling It Out

I’m just back from dinner with a few friends of mine, among them Anand Ramachandran and Salil Tripathi. They…

No More Pockets

Archana Sinha writes in: Nepal has ordered its customs officials to wear pocketless pants, with a view to discouraging…

09 July, 2008

Airbrushing History

Salil Tripathi, responding to my post “Goodbye Mao, Hello Olympics”, points me to an old piece he wrote in the New Statesman:

A history textbook that revels in globalisation, praises the role of the New York Stock Exchange and stresses the importance of J P Morgan and Bill Gates may sound like required inspirational reading for the American classroom, especially when a figure as significant as Chairman Mao merits barely a passing mention.

But the book in question is being used in Shanghai’s state schools. It is a rewriting of history so brazen that it could be possible only under a regime already highly practised with the airbrush. Socialism merits a single chapter, less space than the industrial revolution, and Chinese communism before the economic reforms of 1979 gets just one sentence. Yes, one sentence.

Salil also points out in his email to me:

The FEER issue (June 08) in which I interviewed Ma Jian was banned, and destroyed, by the Chinese. Ma Jian’s (and my) crime? That he wanted people never to forget Tiananmen.

Tiananmen? What’s that?

Posted by Amit Varma in Politics

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