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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

Performance Evaluation

BBC informs us that scientists have now found a way to genetically engineer glowing sperms so they can “track…

In India, Adults aren’t Adults

My friend Rahul Bhatia has a fine story in Open about Dibakar Banerjee’s experience with the censor board during…

Woman in the News

Here’s the WTF headline of the day: Woman co-pilot lands jet solo If that was a man, this wouldn’t…

‘A Jackal Screaming Inside His Head’

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, I came across this beautiful poem named “Dear Augusta,” by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Check it out—and…

The Curse of Vikram Bhatt

Speaking about his new film Shaapit, Vikram Bhatt says: I did some research and a very important fact emerged.…

02 April, 2008

“The Way He Liked Chicken”

Here are the first lines of “The Passion” by Jeanette Winterson:

It was Napolean who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock. What a kitchen that was, with birds in every state of undress; some still cold and slung over hooks, some turning slowly on the spit, but most in wasted piles because the emperor was busy.

Odd to be so governed by an appetite.

It was my first commission. I started as a neck wringer and before long I was the one who carried the platter through inches of mud to his tent. He liked me because I am short. I flatter myself. He did not dislike me. He liked no one except Josephine and he liked her the way he liked chicken.

It’s hard to put down a book that begins like this.

Posted by Amit Varma in Arts and entertainment | Excerpts

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